The sea lady

THE SEA LADY

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\

Am I doing it right ? ' ' asked the Sea Lady.

(See page 150.)

THE SEA LADY

BY

H. G. WELLS

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1902

COPYRIGHT, 1902
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Copyright 1901 by H. G. Wells

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — THE COMING OF THE SEA LADY ... I

II. — SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS 30

III. — THE EPISODE OF THE VARIOUS JOURNALISTS . 11

IV.— THE QUALITY OF PARKER . . .90

V. — THE ABSENCE AND RETURN OF MR. HARRY

CHATTERIS ....... 101

VI. — SYMPTOMATIC 133

VII. — THE CRISIS 204

VIII. — MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT .... 285

298217

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

"Am I doing it right?" asked the Sea Lady

Frontispiece

" Stuff that the public won't believe aren't facts" . 81
She positively and quietly settled down with the

Buntings 90

A little group about the Sea Lady's bath chair . 134

"Why not?" 160

The waiter retires amazed ..... 170
They seemed never to do anything but blow and

sigh and rustle papers ..... 180
Adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater

dignity 216

vii

THE SEA LADY

CHAPTER THE FIRST-

THE COMING OF THE SEA LADY

I

SUCH previous landings of mermaids
as' have left a record, have all a flavour of
doubt. Even the very circumstantial ac-
count of that Bruges Sea Lady, who was
so clever at fancy work, gives occasion to
the sceptic. I must confess that I was
absolutely incredulous of such things until
a year ago. But now, face to face with
indisputable facts in my own immediate
neighbourhood, and with my own second
cousin Melville (of Seaton Carew) as the
chief witness to the story, I see these old
legends in a very different light. Yet so .
i

THE SEA LADY

many people concerned themselves with
the hushing up of this affair, that, but for
my sedulous enquiries, I am certain it
would have become as doubtful as those
older legends in a couple of score of

years. Even now to many minds

The difficulties in the way of the hush-
ing-up process were no doubt exception-
ally great in this case, and that they did
contrive to do so much, seems to show
just how strong are the motives for secrecy
in all such cases. There is certainly no
remoteness nor obscurity about the scene
of these events. They began upon the
beach just east of Sandgate Castle, towards
Folkestone, and they ended on the beach
near Folkestone pier not two miles away.
The beginning was in broad daylight on
a bright blue day in August and in full
sight of the windows of half a dozen
houses. At first sight this alone is suffi-
cient to make the popular want of infor-
2

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

mation almost incredible. But of that
you may think differently later.

Mrs. Randolph Bunting's two charm-
ing daughters were bathing at the time in
company with their guest, Miss Mabel
Glendower. It is from the latter lady
chiefly, and from Mrs. Bunting, that I
have pieced together the precise circum-
stances of the Sea Lady's arrival. From
Miss Glendower, the elder of two Glen-
dower girls, for all that she is a principal
in almost all that follows, I have obtained,
and have sought to obtain, no information
whatever. There is the question of the
lady's feelings — and in this case I gather
they are of a peculiarly complex sort.
Quite naturally they would be. At any
rate, the natural ruthlessness of the liter-
ary calling has failed me. I have not
ventured to touch them. . . .

The villa residences to the east of
Sandgate Castle, you must understand, are
3

THE SEA LADY

particularly lucky in having gardens that
run right down to the beach. There is
no intervening esplanade or road or path
such as cuts off ninety-nine out of the
hundred of houses that face the sea. As
you look down on them from the western
end of the Leas, you see them crowding
the very margin. And as a great number
of high groins stand out from the shore
along this piece of coast, the beach is
practically cut off and made private except
at very low water, when people can get
around the ends of the groins. These
houses are consequently highly desirable
during the bathing season, and it is the
custom of many of their occupiers to let
them furnished during the summer to per-
sons of fashion and affluence.

The Randolph Buntings were such

persons — indisputably. It is true of course

that they were not Aristocrats, or indeed

what an unpaid herald would freely call

4

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

"gentle." They had no right to any sort
of arms. But then, as Mrs. Bunting would
sometimes remark, they made no pretence
of that sort; they were quite free (as
indeed everybody is nowadays) from snob-
bery. They were simple homely Bunt-
ings— Randolph Buntings — "good peo-
ple " as the saying is — of a widely diffused
Hampshire stock addicted to brewing,
and whether a suitably remunerated her-
ald could or could not have proved them
"gentle" there can be no doubt that Mrs.
Bunting was quite justified in taking in
the Gentlewoman, and that Mr. Bunting
and Fred were sedulous gentlemen, and
that all their ways and thoughts were
delicate and nice. And they had staying
with them the two Miss Glendowers, to
whom Mrs. Bunting had been something
of a mother, ever since Mrs. Glendower's
death.

The two Miss Glendowers were half
5

THE SEA LADY

sisters, and gentle beyond dispute, a
county family race that had only for a gen-
eration stooped to trade, and risen at once
Antaeus-like, refreshed and enriched. The
elder, Adeline, was the rich one — the
heiress, with the commercial blood in her
veins. She was really very rich, and she
had dark hair and grey eyes and serious
views, and when her father died, which he
did a little before her step-mother, she had
only the later portion of her later youth
left to her. She was nearly seven-and-
twenty. She had sacrificed her earlier
youth to her father's infirmity of temper
in a way that had always reminded her of
the girlhood of Elizabeth Barrett Brown-
ing. But after his departure for a sphere
where his temper has no doubt a wider
scope — for what is this world for if it is
not for the^Formation of Character ?— she
had come out strongly. It became evident
she had always had a mind, and a very
6

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

active and capable one, an accumulated
fund of energy and much ambition. She
had bloomed into a clear and critical so-
cialism, and she had blossomed at public
meetings ; and now she was engaged to
that really very brilliant and promising
but rather extravagant and romantic per-
son, Harry Chatteris, the nephew of an
earl and the hero of a scandal, and quite a
possible Liberal candidate for the Hythe
division of Kent. At least this last mat-
ter was under discussion and he was about,
and Miss Glendower liked to feel she was
supporting him by being about too, and
that was chiefly why the Buntings had
taken a house in Sandgate for the sum-
mer. Sometimes he would come and stay
a night or so with them, sometimes he
would be off upon affairs, for he was
known to be a very versatile, brilliant, first-
class political young man — and Hythe
very lucky to have a bid for him, all
7

THE SEA LADY

things considered. And Fred Bunting
was engaged to Miss Glendower's less dis-
tinguished, much less wealthy, seventeen-
year old and possibly altogether more or-
dinary half-sister, Mabel Glendower, who
had discerned long since when they were
at school together that it wasn't any good
trying to be clear when Adeline was about.

The Buntings did not bathe, " mixed,"
a thing indeed that was still only very
doubtfully decent in 1898, but Mr. Ran-
dolph Bunting and his son Fred came
down to the beach with them frankly in-
stead of hiding away or going for a walk
according to the older fashion. (This, not-
withstanding that Miss Mabel Glendower,
Fred's fiancte to boot, was of the bathing
party.) They formed a little procession
down under the evergreen oaks in the gar-
den and down the ladder and so to the
sea's margin.

Mrs. Bunting went first, looking as it
8

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

were for Peeping Tom with her glasses,
and Miss Glendower, who never bathed
because it made her feel undignified, went
with her — wearing one of those simple,
costly " art " morning costumes Socialists
affect. Behind this protecting van came,
one by one, the three girls, in their
beautiful Parisian bathing dresses and
headdresses — though these were of course
completely muffled up in huge hooded
gowns of towelling — and wearing of course
stockings and shoes — they bathed in stock-
ings and shoes. Then came Mrs. Bunt-
ing's maid and the second housemaid and
the maid the Glendower girls had brought,
carrying towels, and then at a little inter-
val the two men carrying ropes and things.
(Mrs. Bunting always put a rope around
each of her daughters before ever they
put a foot in the water and held it until
they were safely out again. But Mabel
Glendower would not have a rope.)
2 9

THE SEA LADY

Where the garden ends and the beach
begins Miss Glendower turned aside and
sat down on the green iron seat under the
evergreen oak, and having found her place
in " Sir George Tressady " — a book of
which she was naturally enough at that
time inordinately fond — sat watching the
others go on down the beach. There they
were a very bright and very pleasant group
of prosperous animated people upon the
sunlit beach, and beyond them in streaks
of grey and purple, and altogether calm
save for a pattern of dainty little wave-
lets, was that ancient mother of surprises,
the Sea.

As soon as they reached the high-water
mark where it is no longer indecent to be
clad merely in a bathing dress, each of the
young ladies handed her attendant her
wrap, and after a little fun and laughter
Mrs. Bunting looked carefully to see if
there were any jelly fish, and then they
10

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

went in. And after a minute or so, it
seems Betty, the elder Miss Bunting,
stopped splashing and looked, and then
they all looked, and there, about thirty
yards away was the Sea Lady's head, as if
she were swimming back to land.

Naturally they concluded that she must
be a neighbour from one of the adjacent
houses. They were a little surprised not
to have noticed her going down into the
water, but beyond that her apparition had
no shadow of wonder for them. They
made the furtive penetrating observations
usual in such cases. They could see that
she was swimming very gracefully and
that she had a lovely face and very beau-
tiful arms, but they could not see her
wonderful golden hair because all that was
hidden in a fashionable Phrygian bathing
cap, picked up — as she afterwards ad-
mitted to my second cousin — some nights
before upon a Norman plage. Nor could
ii

THE SEA LADY

they see her lovely shoulders because of
the red costume she wore.

They were just on the point of feeling
their inspection had reached the limit of
really nice manners and Mabel was pre-
tending to go on splashing again and say-
ing to Betty, " She's wearing a red dress.
I wish I could see — " when something
very terrible happened.

The swimmer gave a queer sort of flop
in the water, threw up her arms and —
vanished !

It was the sort of thing that seems for
an instant to freeze everybody, just one
of those things that everyone has read of
and imagined and very few people have
seen.

For a space no one did anything. One,
two, three seconds passed and then for an
instant a bare arm flashed in the air and
vanished again.

Mabel tells me she was quite paralysed

12

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

with horror, she did nothing all the time,
but the two Miss Buntings, recovering a
little, screamed out, " Oh, she's drown-
ing ! " and hastened to get out of the sea
at once, a proceeding accelerated by Mrs.
Bunting, who with great presence of mind
pulled at the ropes with all her weight
and turned about and continued to pull
long after they were many yards from the
water's edge and indeed cowering in a
heap at the foot of the sea wall. Miss
Glendower became aware of a crisis and
descended the steps, " Sir George Tres-
sady " in one hand and the other shading
her eyes, crying in her clear resolute voice,
" She must be saved ! " The maids of
course were screaming — as became them
— but the two men appear to have acted
with the greatest presence of mind.
" Fred, Nexdoors ledder ! " said Mr. Ran-
dolph Bunting — for the next-door neigh-
bour instead of having convenient stone
13

THE SEA LADY

steps had a high wall and a long wooden
ladder, and it had often been pointed out
by Mr. Bunting if ever an accident should
happen to anyone there was that ! In a
moment it seems they had both flung off
jacket and vest, collar, tie and shoes, and
were running the neighbour's ladder out
into the water.

"Where did she go, Ded?" said Fred.

" Right out hea ! " said Mr. Bunting,
and to confirm his word there flashed
again an arm and " something dark " —
something which in the light of all that
subsequently happened I am inclined to
suppose was an unintentional exposure of
the Lady's tail.

Neither of the two gentlemen are
expert swimmers — indeed so far as I can
gather, Mr. Bunting in the excitement
of the occasion forgot almost everything
he had ever known of swimming — but
they waded out valiantly one on each
14

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

side of the ladder, thrust it out before
them and committed themselves to the
deep, in a manner casting no discredit
upon our nation and race.

Yet on the whole I think it is a matter
for general congratulation that they were
not engaged in the rescue of a genuinely
drowning person. At the time of my
enquiries whatever soreness of argument
that may once have obtained between
them had passed, and it is fairly clear that
while Fred Bunting was engaged in swim-
ming hard against the long side of the
ladder and so causing it to rotate slowly
on its axis, Mr. Bunting had already swal-
lowed a very considerable amount of sea-
water and was kicking Fred in the chest
with aimless vigour. This he did, as he
explains, "to get my legs down, you
know. Something about that ladder, you
know, and they would go up ! "

And then quite unexpectedly the Sea
IS

THE SEA LADY

Lady appeared beside them. One lovely
arm supported Mr. Bunting about the
waist and the other was over the ladder.
She did not appear at all pale or fright-
ened or out of breath, Fred told me when
I cross-examined him, though at the time
he was too violently excited to note a de-
tail of that sort. Indeed she smiled and
spoke in an easy pleasant voice.

" Cramp," she said, " I have cramp."
Both the men were convinced of that.

Mr. Bunting was on the point of tell-
ing her to hold tight and she would be
quite safe, when a little wave went almost
entirely into his mouth and reduced him
to wild splutterings.

" Well get you in," said Fred, or some-
thing of that sort, and so they all hung,
bobbing in the water to the tune of Mr.
Bunting's trouble.

They seem to have rocked so for some
time. Fred says the Sea Lady looked
16

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

calm but a little puzzled and that she
seemed to measure the distance shore-
ward. "You mean to save me?" she
asked him.

He was trying to think what could be
done before his father drowned. " We're
saving you now," he said.

" You'll take me ashore ? "

As she seemed so cool he thought he
would explain his plan of operations,
" Trying to get — end of ladder — kick with
my legs. Only a few yards out of our
depth — if we could only "

"Minute — get my breath — moufu'
sea-water," said Mr. Bunting. Splash!
wuff! . . .

And then it seemed to Fred that a
little miracle happened. There was a
swirl of the water like the swirl about a
screw propeller, and he gripped the Sea
Lady and the ladder just in time, as it
seemed to him, to prevent his being washed
17

THE SEA LADY

far out into the Channel. His father van-
ished from his sight with an expression of
astonishment just forming on his face and
reappeared beside him, so far as back and
legs are concerned, holding on to the
ladder with a sort of death grip. And
then behold ! They had shifted a dozen
yards inshore, and they were in less than
five feet of water and Fred could feel the
ground.

At its touch his amazement and dis-
may immediately gave way to the purest
heroism. He thrust ladder and Sea Lady
before him, abandoned the ladder and his
now quite disordered parent, caught her
tightly in his arms, and bore her up out
of the water. The young ladies cried
" Saved ! " the maids cried " Saved ! " Dis-
tant voices echoed " Saved, Hooray ! "
Everybody in fact cried " Saved ! " except
Mrs. Bunting, who was, she says, under
the impression that Mr. Bunting was in a
18

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

fit, and Mr. Bunting, who seems to have
been under an impression that all those
laws of nature by which, under Providence,
we are permitted to float and swim, were
in suspense and that the best thing to do
was to kick very hard and fast until the
end should come. But in a dozen seconds
or so his head was up again and his feet
were on the ground and he was making
whale and walrus noises, and noises like a
horse and like an angry cat and like saw-
ing, and was wiping the water from his
eyes ; and Mrs. Bunting (except that
now and then she really had to turn and
say " Randolph ! ") could give her atten-
tion to the beautiful burthen that clung
about her son.

And it is a curious thing that the Sea
Lady was at least a minute out of the
water before anyone discovered that she
was in any way different from — other
ladies. I suppose they were all crowding
19

THE SEA LADY

close to her and looking at her beautiful
face, or perhaps they imagined that she
was wearing some indiscreet but novel
form of dark riding habit or something of
that sort. Anyhow not one of them
noticed it, although it must have been be-
fore their eyes as plain as day. Certainly
it must have blended with the costume.
And there they stood, imagining that Fred
had rescued a lovely lady of indisput-
able fashion, who had been bathing from
some neighbouring house, and wondering
why on earth there was nobody on the
beach to claim her. And she clung to
Fred and, as Miss Mabel Glendower
subsequently remarked in the course of
conversation with him, Fred clung to
her.

" I had cramp," said the Sea Lady,
with her lips against Fred's cheek and one
eye on Mrs. Bunting. " I am sure it was
cramp. . . . I've got it still."
20

COMING OP THE SEA LADY

" I don't see anybody — " began Mrs.
Bunting.

" Please carry me in," said the Sea
Lady, closing her eyes as if she were ill —
though her cheek was flushed and warm.
" Carry me in."

" Where? "gasped Fred.

" Carry me into the house," she whis-
pered to him.

"Which house?"

Mrs. Bunting came nearer.

" Your house," said the Sea Lady, and
shut her eyes for good and became obliv-
ious to all further remarks.

"She— But I don't understand—"
said Mrs. Bunting, addressing every-
body. . . .

And then it was they saw it. Nettie,
the younger Miss Bunting, saw it first.
She pointed, she says, before she could
find words to speak. Then they all saw
it ! Miss Glendower, I believe, was the
21

THE SEA LADY

person who was last to see it. At any
rate it would have been like her if she
had been.

" Mother," said Nettie, giving words
to the general horror. "Mother! She
has a tail!"

And then the three maids and Mabel
Glendower screamed one after the other.
41 Look ! " they cried. " A tail ! "

"Of all—" said Mrs. Bunting, and
words failed her.

" Oh ! " said Miss Glendower, and put
her hand to her heart.

And then one of the maids gave it a
name. "It's a mermaid!" screamed the
maid, and then everyone screamed, " It's
a mermaid."

Except the mermaid herself ;- she re-
mained quite passive, pretending to be in-
sensible partly on Fred's shoulder and
altogether in his arms.

22

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

II

That, you know, is the tableau so far
as I have been able to piece it together
again. You must imagine this little knot
of people upon the beach, and Mr. Bunt-
ing, I figure, a little apart, just wading out
of the water and very wet and incredulous
and half drowned. And the neighbour's
ladder was drifting quietly out to sea.

Of course it was one of those positions
that have an air of being conspicuous.

Indeed it was conspicuous. It was
some way below high water and the
group stood out perhaps thirty yards
down the beach. Nobody, as Mrs. Bunt-
ing told my cousin Melville, knew a bit
what to, do and they all had even an ex-
aggerated share of the national hatred of
being seen in a puzzle. The mermaid
seemed content to remain a beautiful
problem clinging to Fred, and by all ac-
23

THE SEA LADY

counts she was a reasonable burthen for a
man. It seems that the very large family
of people who were stopping at the house
called Koot Hoomi had appeared in force,
and they were all staring and gesticulat-
ing. They were just the sort of people
the Buntings did not want to know —
tradespeople very probably. Presently
one of the men — the particularly vulgar
man who used to shoot at the gulls — be-
gan putting down- their ladder as if he in-
tended to offer advice, and Mrs. Bunting
also became aware of the black glare of
the field glasses of a still more horrid man
to the west.

Moreover the popular author who lived
next door, an irascible dark square-headed
little man in spectacles, suddenly turned
up and began bawling from his inacces-
sible wall top something foolish about his
ladder. Nobody thought of his silly lad-
der or took any trouble about it, naturally.
24

COMING OP THE SEA LADY

He was quite stupidly excited. To judge
by his tone and gestures he was using
dreadful language and seemed disposed
every moment to jump down to the beach
and come to them.

And then to crown the situation, over
the westward groin appeared Low Excur-
sionists !

First of all their heads came, and then
their remarks. Then they began to clamber
the breakwater with joyful shouts.

" Pip, Pip," said the Low Excursion-
ists as they climbed — it was the year of
" pip, pip "—and, " What HO she bumps ! "
and then less generally, " What's up yere?"

And the voices of other Low Excur-
sionists still invisible answered, " Pip, Pip."

It was evidently a large party.

" Anything wrong ? " shouted one of
the Low Excursionists at a venture.

"My dear!" said Mrs. Bunting to
Mabel, "what are we to do?" And in
3 25

THE SEA LADY

her description of the affair to my cousin
Melville she used always to make that the
clou of the story. " My DEAR ! What
ARE we to do?"

I believe that in her desperation she
even glanced at the water. But of course
to have put the mermaid back then would
have involved the most terrible explana-
tions. . . .

It was evident there was only one thing
to be done. Mrs. Bunting said as much.
" The only thing," said she, "is to carry
her indoors."

And carry her indoors they did ! . . .

One can figure the little procession.
In front Fred, wet and astonished but still
clinging and clung to, and altogether too
out of breath for words. And in his arms
the Sea Lady. She had a beautiful figure,
I understand, until that horrible tail began
(and the fin of it, Mrs. Bunting told my
cousin in a whispered confidence, went up
26

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

and down and with pointed corners for all
the world like a mackerel's). It flopped
and dripped along the path — I imagine.
She was wearing a very nice and very
long-skirted dress of red material trimmed
with coarse white lace, and she had, Mabel
told me, a gilet, though that would scarcely
show as they went up the garden. And
that Phrygian cap hid all her golden hair
and showed the white, low, level forehead
over her sea-blue eyes. From all that fol-
lowed, I imagine her at the moment scan-
ning the veranda and windows of the
house with a certain eagerness of scrutiny.
Behind this staggering group of two
I believe Mrs. Bunting came. Then Mr.
Bunting. Dreadfully wet and broken
down Mr. Bunting must have been by then,
and from one or two things I have no-
ticed since, I can't help imagining him as
pursuing his wife with, " Of course, my
dear, / couldn't tell, you know ! "
27

THE SEA LADY

And then, in a dismayed yet curious
bunch, the girls in their wraps of towel-
ling and the maids carrying the ropes and
things and, as if inadvertently, as became
them, most of Mr. and Fred Bunting's
clothes.

And then Miss Glendower, for once at
least in no sort of pose whatever, clutch-
ing " Sir George Tressady " and perplexed
and disturbed beyond measure.

And then, as it were pursuing them
all, " Pip, pip," and the hat and raised
eyebrows of a Low Excursionist still anx-
ious to know " What's up?" from the
garden end.

So it was, or at least in some such way,
and to the accompaniment of the wildest
ravings about some ladder or other heard
all too distinctly over the garden wall —
(" Overdressed Snobbs take my rare old
English adjective ladder . . . !") — that
they carried the Sea Lady (who appeared
28

COMING OF THE SEA LADY

serenely insensible to everything) up
through the house and laid her down
upon the couch in Mrs. Bunting's room.

And just as Miss Glendower was sug-
gesting that the very best thing they could
do would be to send for a doctor, the Sea
Lady with a beautiful naturalness sighed
and came to.

29

CHAPTER THE SECOND
SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I

THERE with as much verisimilitude as
I can give it, is how the Folkestone mer-
maid really came to land. There can be
no doubt that the whole affair was a delib-
erately planned intrusion upon her part.
She never had cramp, she couldn't have
cramp, and as for drowning, nobody was
near drowning for a moment except Mr.
Bunting, whose valuable life she very
nearly sacrificed at the outset of her ad-
venture. And her next proceeding was
to demand an interview with Mrs. Bunt-
ing and to presume upon her youthful
and glowing appearance to gain the sup-
port, sympathy and'assistance of that good-
30

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

hearted lady (who as a matter of fact was
a thing of yesterday, a mere chicken in
comparison with her own immemorial
years) in her extraordinary raid upon
Humanity.

Her treatment of Mrs. Bunting would
be incredible if we did not know that, in
spite of many disadvantages, the Sea Lady
was an extremely well read person. She
admitted as much in several later conver-
sations with my cousin Melville. For a
time there was a friendly intimacy — so
Melville always preferred to present it —
between these two, and my cousin, who
has a fairly considerable amount of curi-
osity, learnt many very interesting details
about the life " out there " or " down
there " — for the Sea Lady used either ex-
pression. At first the Sea Lady was ex-
ceedingly reticent under the gentle insist-
ence of his curiosity, but after a time, I
gather, she gave way to bursts of cheerful

THE SEA LADY

confidence. " It is clear," says my cousin,
" that the old ideas of the submarine life as
a sort of perpetual game of 'who-hoop'
through groves of coral, diversified by
moonlight hair-combings on rocky strands,
need very extensive modification." In
this matter of literature, for example, they
have practically all that we have, and un-
limited leisure to read it in. Melville is
very insistent upon and rather envious of
that unlimited leisure. A picture of a
mermaid swinging in a hammock of
woven seaweed, with what bishops call a
" latter-day " novel in one hand and a six-
teen candle-power phosphorescent fish in
the other, may jar upon one's preconcep-
tions, but it is certainly far more in ac-
cordance with the picture of the abyss she
printed on his mind. Everywhere Change
works her will on things. Everywhere,
and even among the immortals, Modernity
spreads. Even on Olympus I suppose
32

SOME FIKST IMPRESSIONS

there is a Progressive party and a new
Phaeton agitating to supersede the horses
of his father by some solar motor of his
own. I suggested as much to Melville
and he said " Horrible ! Horrible ! " and
stared hard at my study fire. Dear old
Melville ! She gave him no end of facts
about Deep Sea Reading.

Of course they do not print books
" out there," for the printer's ink under
water would not so much run as fly — she
made that very plain ; but in one way or
another nearly the whole of terrestrial lit-
erature, says Melville, has come to them.
" We know," she said. They form indeed
a distinct reading public, and additions to
their vast submerged library that circulates
forever with the tides, are now pretty sys-
tematically sought. The sources are vari-
ous and in some cases a little odd. Many
books have been found in sunken ships.
" Indeed ! " said Melville. There is always
33

THE SEA LADY

a dropping and blowing overboard of nov-
els and magazines from most passenger-
carrying vessels — sometimes, but these are
not as a rule valuable additions — a delib-
erate shying overboard. But sometimes
books of an exceptional sort are thrown
over when they are quite finished. (Mel-
ville is a dainty irritable reader and no
doubt he understood that.) From the sea
beaches of holiday resorts, moreover, the
lighter sorts of literature are occasionally
getting blown out to sea. And so soon
as the Booms of our great Popular Novel-
ists are over, Melville assured me, the
libraries find it convenient to cast such
surplus copies of their current works as
the hospitals and prisons cannot take, be-
low high-water mark.

" That's not generally known," said I.

" They know it," said Melville.

In other ways the beaches yield.
Young couples who " begin to sit heapy,"
34

SOME FIKST IMPKESSIONS

the Sea Lady told my cousin, as often as
not will leave excellent modern fiction
behind them, when at last they return to
their proper place. There is a particularly
fine collection of English work, it seems,
in the deep water of the English Channel ;
practically the whole of the Tauchnitz
Library is there, thrown overboard at the
last moment by conscientious or timid
travellers returning from the continent,
and there was for a time a similar source
of supply of American reprints in the
Mersey, but that has fallen off in recent
years. And the Deep Sea Mission for
Fishermen has now for some years been
raining down tracts and giving a particu-
larly elevated tone of thought to the ex-
tensive shallows of the North Sea. The
Sea Lady was very precise on these points.
When one considers the conditions of
its accumulation, one is not surprised to
hear that the element of fiction is as
35

THE SEA LADY

dominant in this Deep Sea Library as it
is upon the counters of Messrs. Mudie ;
but my cousin learnt that the various
illustrated magazines, and particularly the
fashion papers, are valued even more high-
ly than novels, are looked for far more
eagerly and perused with envious emo-
tion. Indeed on that point my cousin got
a sudden glimpse of one of the motives
that had brought this daring young lady
into the air. He made some sort of sugges-
tion. " We should have taken to dress-
ing long ago," she said, and added, with a
vague quality of laughter in her tone, " it
isn't that we're unfeminine, Mr. Melville.
Only — as I was explaining to Mrs. Bunt-
ing, one must consider one's circumstances
— how can one hope to keep anything nice
under water ? Imagine lace ! "

" Soaked ! " said my cousin Melville.

" Drenched ! " said the Sea Lady.

" Ruined ! " said my cousin Melville.

36

SOME FIEST IMPRESSIONS

"And then you know," said the Sea
Lady very gravely, " one's hair ! "

" Of course," said Melville. " Why !—
you can never get it dry / "

<4 That's precisely it," said she.

My cousin Melville had a new light
on an old topic. " And that's why — in
the old time— — ? "

" Exactly ! " she cried, " exactly ! Be-
fore there were so many Excursionists
and sailors and Low People about, one
came out, one sat and brushed it in the
sun. And then of course it really was
possible to do it up. But now "

She made a petulant gesture and
looked gravely at Melville, biting her lip
the while. My cousin made a sympa-
thetic noise. " The horrid modern spirit,"
he said — almost automatically. . . .

But though fiction and fashion appear
to be 'so regrettably dominant in the nour-
ishment of the mer-mind, it must not be
37

THE SEA LADY

supposed that the most serious side of
our reading never reaches the bottom of
the sea. There was, for example, a case
quite recently, the Sea Lady said, of the
captain of a sailing ship whose mind had
become unhinged by the huckstering up-
roar of the Times and Daily Mail, and
who had not only bought a second-hand
copy of the Times reprint of the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica, but also that dense col-
lection of literary snacks and samples,
that All-Literature Sausage which has
been compressed under the weighty edit-
ing of Doctor Richard Garnett. It has
long been notorious that even the greatest
minds of the past were far too copious
and confusing in their — as the word goes
— lubrications. Doctor Garnett, it is al-
leged, has seized the gist and presented
it so compactly that almost any business
man now may take hold of it without
hindrance to his more serious occupations.
38

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The unfortunate and misguided seaman
seems to have carried the entire collection
aboard with him, with the pretty evident
intention of coming to land in Sydney
the wisest man alive — a Hindoo-minded
thing to do. The result might have been
anticipated. The mass shifted in the
night, threw the whole weight of the
science of the middle nineteenth century
and the literature of all time, in a viru-
lently concentrated state, on one side of his
little vessel and capsized it instantly. . . .
The ship, the Sea Lady said, dropped
into the abyss as if it were loaded with
lead, and its crew and other movables did
not follow it down until much later in
the day. The captain was the first to ar-
rive, said the Sea Lady, and it is a curious
fact, due probably to some preliminary
dippings into his purchase, that he came
head first, instead of feet down and limbs
expanded in the customary way. . . .
39

THE SEA LADY

However, such exceptional windfalls
avail little against the rain of light litera-
ture that is constantly going on. The
novel and the newspaper remain the
world's reading even at the bottom of the
sea. As subsequent events would seem to
show, it must have been from the com-
mon latter-day novel and the newspaper
that the Sea Lady derived her ideas of
human life and sentiment and the inspira-
tion of her visit. And if at times she
seemed to underestimate the nobler ten-
dencies of the human spirit, if at times
she seemed disposed to treat Adeline Glen-
dower and many of the deeper things of
life with a certain sceptical levity, if she
did at last indisputably subordinate reason
and right feeling to passion, it is only just
to her, and to those deeper issues, that we
should ascribe her aberrations to their
proper cause. . . .

40

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

II

My cousin Melville, I was saying, did
at one time or another get a vague, a very
vague conception of what that deep-sea
world was like. But whether his concep-
tion has any quality of truth in it is more
than I dare say. He gives me an impres-
sion of a very strange world indeed, a
green luminous fluidity in which these
beings float, a world lit by great shining
monsters that drift athwart it, and by wav-
ing forests of nebulous luminosity amidst
which the little fishes drift like netted
stars. It is a world with neither sitting,
nor standing, nor going, nor coming,
through which its inhabitants float and
drift as one floats and drifts in dreams.
And the way they live there ! " My dear
man!" said Melville, "it must be like a
painted ceiling ! . . ."

I do not even feel certain that it is in
4 41

THE SEA LADY

the sea particularly that this world of the
Sea Lady is to be found. But about
those saturated books and drowned scraps
of paper, you say ? Things are not always
what they seem, and she told him all of
that, we must reflect, one laughing after-
noon.

She could appear, at times, he says, as
real as you or I, and again came mystery
all about her. There were times when it
seemed to him you might have hurt her
or killed her as you can hurt and kill any-
one— with a penknife for example — and
there were times when it seemed to him
you could have destroyed the whole ma-
terial universe and left her smiling still.
But of this ambiguous element in the
lady, more is to be told later. There are
wider seas than ever keel sailed upon, and
deeps that no lead of human casting will
ever plumb. When it is all summed up,
I have to admit, I do not know, I cannot
42

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

tell. I fall back upon Melville and my
poor array of collected facts. At first
there was amazingly little strangeness
about her for any who had to deal with
her. There she was, palpably solid and
material, a lady out of the sea.

This modern world is a world where
the wonderful is utterly commonplace.
We are bred to show a quiet freedom
from amazement, and why should we
boggle at material Mermaids, with Dewars
solidifying all sorts of impalpable things
and Marconi waves spreading everywhere ?
To the Buntings she was as matter of
fact, as much a matter of authentic and
reasonable motives and of sound solid
sentimentality, as everything else in the
Bunting world. So she was for them in
the beginning, and so up to this day with
them her memory remains.

43

THE SEA LADY

III

The way in which the Sea Lady talked
to Mrs. Bunting on that memorable morn-
ing, when she lay all wet and still visibly
fishy on the couch in Mrs. Bunting's
dressing-room, I am also able to give with
some little fulness, because Mrs. Bunting
repeated it all several times, acting the
more dramatic speeches in it, to my cousin
Melville in several of those good long
talks that both of them in those happy
days — and particularly Mrs. Bunting — al-
ways enjoyed so much. And with her
very first speech, it seems, the Sea Lady
took her line straight to Mrs. Bunting's
generous managing heart. She sat up on
the couch, drew the antimacassar modest-
ly over her deformity, and sometimes look-
ing sweetly down and sometimes openly
and trustfully into Mrs. Bunting's face,
and speaking in a soft clear grammatical
44

SOME FIKST IMPEESSIONS

manner that stamped her at once as no
mere mermaid but a finished fine Sea
Lady, she " made a clean breast of it," as
Mrs. Bunting said, and " fully and frank-
ly " placed herself in Mrs. Bunting's
hands.

" Mrs. Bunting," said Mrs. Bunting to
my cousin Melville, in a dramatic render-
ing of the Sea Lady's manner, " do permit
me to apologise for this intrusion, for I
know it is an intrusion. But indeed it
has almost been forced upon me, and if
you will only listen to my story, Mrs.
Bunting, I think you will find — well, if
not a complete excuse for me — for I can
understand how exacting your standards
must be — at any rate some excuse for what
I have done — for what I must call, Mrs.
Bunting, my deceitful conduct towards
you. Deceitful it was, Mrs. Bunting, for
I never had cramp — But then, Mrs.
Bunting " — and here Mrs. Bunting would
45

THE SEA LADY

insert a long impressive pause — " I never
had a mother ! "

" And then and there," said Mrs. Bunt-
ing, when she told the story to my cousin
Melville, "the poor child burst into tears
and confessed she had been born ages and
ages ago in some dreadful miraculous way
in some terrible place near Cyprus, and
had no more right to a surname — Well,
there — ! " said Mrs. Bunting, telling the
story to my cousin Melville and making
the characteristic gesture with which she
always passed over and disowned any in-
delicacy to which her thoughts might have
tended. "And all the while speaking
with such a nice accent and moving in
such a ladylike way ! "

" Of course," said my cousin Melville,
"there are classes of people in whom one
excuses — One must weigh "

" Precisely," said Mrs. Bunting. " And
you see it seems she deliberately chose

46

SOME FIEST IMPRESSIONS

me as the very sort of person she had al-
ways wanted to appeal to. It wasn't as
if she came to us haphazard — she picked
us out She had been swimming round
the coast watching people day after day,
she said, for quite a long time, and she
said when she saw my face, watching the
girls bathe — you know how funny girls
are," said Mrs. Bunting, with a little dep-
recatory laugh, and all the while with a
moisture of emotion in her kindly eyes.
" She took quite a violent fancy to me
from the very first."

" I can quite believe that, at any
rate," said my cousin Melville with unc-
tion. I know he did, although he al-
ways leaves it out of the story when he
tells it to me. But then he forgets that
I have had the occasional privilege of
making a third party in these good long
talks.

"You know it's most extraordinary
47

THE SEA LADY

and exactly like the German story," said
Mrs. Bunting. " Oom — what is it ?"

"Undine?"

" Exactly — yes. And it really seems
these poor creatures are Immortal, Mr.
Melville — at least within limits — creatures
born of the elements and resolved into
the elements again — and just as it is in
the story — there's always a something —
they have no Souls ! No Souls at all !
Nothing ! And the poor child feels it.
She feels it dreadfully. But in order to
get souls, Mr. Melville, you know they
have to come into the world of men. At
least so they believe down there. And so
she has come to Folkestone. To get a
soul. Of course that's her great object,
Mr. Melville, but she's not at all fanatical
or silly about it. Any more than we
are. Of course we — people who feel
deeply "

" Of course," said my cousin Melville,
48

SOME FIKST IMPEESSIONS

with, I know, a momentary expression of
profound gravity, drooping eyelids and a
hushed voice. For my cousin does a
good deal with his soul, one way and an-
other.

"And she feels that if she comes to
earth at all," said Mrs. Bunting, " she must
come among nice people and in a nice
way. One can understand her feeling like
that. But imagine her difficulties ! To
be a mere cause of public excitement, and
silly paragraphs in the silly season, to be
made a sort of show of, in fact — she
doesn't want any of it," added Mrs. Bunt-
ing, with the emphasis of both hands.

" What does she want ? " asked my
cousin Melville.

11 She wants to be treated exactly like
a human being, to be a human being, just
like you or me. And she asks to stay
with us, to be one of our family, and to
learn how we live. She has asked me
49

THE SEA LADY

to advise her what books to read that are
really nice, and where she can get a dress-
maker, and how she can find a clergy-
man to sit under who would really be
likely to understand her case, and every-
thing. She wants me to advise her about
it all. She wants to put herself altogether
in my hands. And she asked it all so
nicely and sweetly. She wants me to ad-
vise her about it all."

" Um," said my cousin Melville.

" You should have heard her ! " cried
Mrs. Bunting.

" Practically it's another daughter," he
reflected.

" Yes," said Mrs. Bunting, "and even
that did not frighten me. She admitted
as much."

" Still "

He took a step.

" She has means ? " he inquired ab-
ruptly.

50

SOME PIKST IMPRESSIONS

" Ample. She told me there was a
box. She said it was moored at the end
of a groin, and accordingly dear Randolph
watched all through luncheon, and after-
wards, when they could wade out and reach
the end of the rope that tied it, he and
Fred pulled it in and helped Fitch and
the coachman carry it up. It's a curious
little box for a lady to have, well made, of
course, but of wood, with a ship painted
on the top and the name of ' Tom ' cut in
it roughly with a knife ; but, as she says,
leather simply will not last down there, and
one has to put up with what one can get ;
and the great thing is it's full, perfectly
full, of gold coins and things. Yes,
gold — and diamonds, Mr. Melville. You
know Randolph understands something —
Yes, well he says that box — oh ! I couldn't
tell you how much it isn't worth ! And
all the gold things with just a sort of
faint reddy touch. . . . But anyhow, she

THE SEA LADY

is rich, as well as charming and beauti-
ful. And really you know, Mr. Melville,
altogether — Well, I'm going to help
her, just as much as ever I can. Practi-
cally, she's to be our paying guest. As
you know — it's no great secret between us
-Adeline— Yes. . . . She'll be the
same. And I shall bring her out and in-
troduce her to people and so forth. It
will be a great help. And for everyone
except just a few intimate friends, she is
to be just a human being who happens to
be an invalid — temporarily an invalid —
and we are going to engage a good, trust-
worthy woman — the sort of woman who
isn't astonished at anything, you know —
they're a little expensive but they're to be
got even nowadays — who will be her
maid — and make her dresses, her skirts at
any rate — and we shall dress her in long
skirts — and throw something over It, you

know "

52

SOME FIKST IMPRESSIONS

-Over ?"

" The tail, you know."

My cousin Melville said " Precisely !"
with his head and eyebrows. But that was
the point that hadn't been clear to him so
far, and it took his breath away. Posi-
tively— a tail ! All sorts of incorrect theo-
ries went by the board. Somehow he felt
this was a topic not to be too urgently
pursued. But he and Mrs. Bunting were
old friends.

"And she really has ... a tail?" he
asked.

" Like the tail of a big mackerel," said
Mrs. Bunting, and he asked no more.

" It's a most extraordinary situation,"
he said.

"But what else could I do?" asked
Mrs. Bunting.

" Of course the thing's a tremendous
experiment," said my cousin Melville, and
repeated quite inadvertently, "a tail!"
53

THE SEA LADY

Clear and vivid before his eyes, ob-
structing absolutely the advance of his
thoughts, were the shiny clear lines, the
oily black, the green and purple and silver,
and the easy expansiveness of a mackerel's
termination.

" But really, you know," said my
cousin Melville, protesting in the name
of reason and the nineteenth century — "a
tail!"

" I patted it," said Mrs. Bunting.

IV

Certain supplementary aspects of the
Sea Lady's first conversation with Mrs.
Bunting I got from that lady herself after-
wards.

The Sea Lady had made one queer
mistake. " Your four charming daugh-
ters," she said, "and your two sons."

"My dear!" cried Mrs. Bunting —
54

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

they had got through their preliminaries
by then — " I've only two daughters and
one son ! "

"The young man who carried — who
rescued me ? "

"Yes. And the other two girls are
friends, you know, visitors who are stay-
ing with me. On land one has vis-
itors "

u I know. So I made a mistake?"
" Oh yes."

" And the other young man ?"
" You don't mean Mr. Bunting."
"Who is Mr. Bunting?"

" The other gentleman who "

"No/"

" There was no one "

" But several mornings ago ?"
"Could it have been Mr. Melville?
. . . / know ! You mean Mr. Chatteris !
I remember, he came down with us one
morning. A tall young man with fair —
55

THE SEA LADY

rather curlyish you might say — hair, wasn't
it ? And a rather thoughtful face. He
was dressed all in white linen and he sat
on the beach."

" I fancy he did," said the Sea Lady.

" He's not my son. He's — he's a
friend. He's engaged to Adeline, to the
elder Miss Glendower. He was stopping
here for a night or so. I daresay he'll
come again on his way back from Paris.
Dear me ! Fancy my having a son like
that ! "

The Sea Lady was not quite prompt in
replying.

" What a stupid mistake for me to
make ! " she said slowly ; and then with
more animation, " Of course, now I think,
he's much too old to be your son ! "

"Well, he's thirty-two!" said Mrs.
Bunting with a smile.

" It's preposterous."

" I won't say that."
56

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

" But I saw him only at a distance,
you know," said the Sea Lady ; and then,
"And so he is engaged to Miss Glen-
dower? And Miss Glendower ?"

" Is the young lady in the purple robe
who "

"Who carried a book?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Bunting, "that's
the one. They've been engaged three
months."

" Dear me ! " said the Sea Lady. " She
seemed — And is he very much in love
with her?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Bunting.

" Very much?"

"Oh — of course. If he wasn't, he
wouldn't "

"Of course," said the Sea Lady
thoughtfully.

" And it's such an excellent match in
every way. Adeline's just in the very

position to help him "

57

THE SEA LADY

And Mrs. Bunting it would seem
briefly but clearly supplied an indication
of the precise position of Mr. Chatteris,
not omitting even that he was the nephew
of an earl, as indeed why should she omit
it ? — and the splendid prospects of his al-
liance with Miss Glendower's plebeian but
extensive wealth. The Sea Lady listened
gravely. " He is young, he is able, he
may still be anything — anything. And
she is so earnest, so clever herself — always
reading. She even reads Blue Books —
government Blue Books I mean — dread-
ful statistical schedulely things. And the
condition of the poor and all those
things. She knows more about the con-
dition of the poor than any one I've ever
met ; what they earn and what they eat,
and how many of them live in a room.
So dreadfully crowded, you know- — per-
fectly shocking. . . . She is just the
helper he needs. So dignified — so ca-
58

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

pable of giving political parties and in-
fluencing people, so earnest ! And you
know she can talk to workmen and take
an interest in trades unions, and in quite
astonishing things. / always think she's
just Marcella come to life."

And from that the good lady em-
barked upon an illustrative but involved
anecdote of Miss Glendower's marvellous
blue-bookishness. . . .

" He'll come here again soon ? " the
Sea Lady asked quite carelessly in the
midst of it.

The query was carried away and lost in
the anecdote, so that later the Sea Lady re-
peated her question even more carelessly.

But Mrs. Bunting did not know
whether the Sea Lady sighed at all or not.
She thinks not. She was so busy telling
her all about everything that I don't think
she troubled very much to see how her in-
formation was received.
59

THE SEA LADY

What mind she had left over from her
own discourse was probably centred on
the tail.

V

Even to Mrs. Bunting's senses — she is
one of those persons who take everything
(except of course impertinence or impro-
priety) quite calmly — it must, I think,
have been a little astonishing to find her-
self sitting in her boudoir, politely taking
tea with a real live legendary creature.
They were having tea in the boudoir, be-
cause of callers, and quite quietly because,
in spite of the Sea Lady's smiling assur-
ances, Mrs, Bunting would have it she
must be tired and unequal to the exer-
tions of social intercourse. " After such
a journey," said Mrs. Bunting. There
were just the three, Adeline Glendower
being the third ; and Fred and the three
other girls, I understand, hung about in a
60

SOME FIEST IMPKESSIONS

general sort of way up and down the stair-
case (to the great annoyance of the serv-
ants who were thus kept out of it alto-
gether) confirming one another's views of
the tail, arguing on the theory of mer-
maids, revisiting the garden and beach and
trying to invent an excuse for seeing the
invalid again. They were forbidden to
intrude and pledged to secrecy by Mrs.
Bunting, and they must have been as al-
together unsettled and miserable as young
people can be. For a time they played
croquet in a half-hearted way, each no
doubt with an eye on the boudoir win-
dow.

(And as for Mr. Bunting, he was in
bed.)

I gather that the three ladies sat and

"talked as any three ladies all quite resolved

to be pleasant to one another would talk.

Mrs. Bunting and Miss Glendower were

far too well trained in the observances of

61

THE SEA LADY

good society (which is as every one knows,
even the best of it now, extremely mixed)
to make too searching enquiries into the
Sea Lady's status and way of life or pre-
cisely where she lived when she was at
home, or whom she knew or didn't know.
Though in their several ways they wanted
to know badly enough. The Sea Lady
volunteered no information, contenting
herself with an entertaining superficiality
of touch and go, in the most ladylike way.
She professed herself greatly delighted
with the sensation of being in air and
superficially quite dry, and was particu-
larly charmed with tea.

"And don't you have tea?" cried
Miss Glendower, startled.

" How can we ? "

" But do you really mean ?"

" I've never tasted tea before. How
do you think we can boil a kettle ? "

"What a strange — what a wonderful
62

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

world it must be ! " cried Adeline. And
Mrs. Bunting said : " I can hardly imagine
it without tea. It's worse than — I mean
it reminds me — of abroad."

Mrs. Bunting was in the act of refill-
ing the Sea Lady's cup. " I suppose,"
she said suddenly, " as you're not used to
it — It won't affect your diges — " She
glanced at Adeline and hesitated. " But
it's China tea."

And she filled the cup.

" It's an inconceivable world to me,"
said Adeline. " Quite."

Her dark eyes rested thoughtfully on
the Sea Lady for a space. " Inconceiv-
able," she repeated, for, in that unaccount-
able way in which a whisper will attract
attention that a turmoil fails to arouse, the
tea had opened her eyes far more than
the tail.

The Sea Lady looked at her with sud-
den frankness. "And think how won-
63

THE SEA LADY

derful all this must seem to me ! " she
remarked.

But Adeline's imagination was aroused
for the moment and she was not to be put
aside by the Sea Lady's terrestrial impres-
sions. She pierced — for a moment or so
— the ladylike serenity, the assumption of
a terrestrial fashion of mind that was im-
posing so successfully upon Mrs. Bunting.
"It must be," she said, "the strangest
world." And she stopped invitingly. . . .

She could not go beyond that and the
Sea Lady would not help her.

There was a pause, a silent eager
search for topics. Apropos of the Niph-
etos roses on the table they talked of
flowers and Miss Glendower ventured :
" You have your anemones too ! How
beautiful they must be amidst the rocks ! "

And the Sea Lady said they were
very pretty — especially the cultivated
sorts. . . .

64

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

" And the fishes," said Mrs. Bunting.
" How wonderful it must be to see the
fishes!"

" Some of them," volunteered the Sea
Lady, "will come and feed out of one's
hand."

Mrs. Bunting made a little coo of ap-
proval. She was reminded of chrysanthe-
mum shows and the outside of the Royal
Academy exhibition and she was one of
those people to whom only the familiar is
really satisfying. She had a momentary
vision of the abyss as a sort of diver-
ticulum of Piccadilly and the Temple, a
place unexpectedly rational and comfort-
able. There was a kink for a time about
a little matter of illumination, but it re-
curred to Mrs. Bunting only long after.
The Sea Lady had turned from Miss
Glendower's interrogative gravity of ex-
pression to the sunlight.

" The sunlight seems so golden here,"
65

THE SEA LADY

said the Sea Lady. " Is it always gold-
en?"

"You have that beautiful greenery-
blue shimmer I suppose," said Miss Glen-
dower, "that one catches sometimes ever
so faintly in aquaria "

" One lives deeper than that," said the
Sea Lady. " Everything is phosphores-
cent, you know, a mile or so down, and
it's like — I hardly know. As towns
look at night — only brighter. Like piers
and things like that."

" Really ! " said Mrs. Bunting, with the
Strand after the theatres in her head.
"Quite bright?"

" Oh, quite," said the Sea Lady.

" But — " struggled Adeline, "is it
never put out ? "

" It's so different," said the Sea
Lady.

" That's why it is so interesting," said
Adeline.

66

SOME FIEST IMPEESSIONS

"There are no nights and days, you
know. No time nor anything of that
sort."

" Now that's very queer," said Mrs.
Bunting with Miss Glendower's teacup in
her hand — they were both drinking quite
a lot of tea absent-mindedly, in their inter-
est in the Sea Lady. " But how do you
tell when it's Sunday ? "

"We don't — " began the Sea Lady.
" At least not exactly—" And then—" Of
course one hears the beautiful hymns that
are sung on the passenger ships."

" Of course ! " said Mrs. Bunting, hav-
ing sung so in her youth and quite forget-
ting something elusive that she had pre-
viously seemed to catch.

But afterwards there came a glimpse
of some more serious divergence — a
glimpse merely. Miss Glendower haz-
arded a supposition that the sea people
also had their Problems, and then it
67

THE SEA LADY

would seem the natural earnestness of her
disposition overcame her proper attitude
of ladylike superficiality and she began to
ask questions. There can be no doubt that
the Sea Lady was evasive, and Miss Glen-
dower, perceiving that she had been a trifle
urgent, tried to cover her error by express-
ing a general impression.

" I can't see it," she said, with a gesture
that asked for sympathy. " One wants to
see it, one wants to be it. One needs to
be born a mer-child."

"A mer-child ?" asked the Sea Lady.

" Yes — Don't you call your little
ones ?"

" What little ones ? " asked the Sea
Lady.

She regarded them for a moment with
a frank wonder, the undying wonder of
the Immortals at that perpetual decay and
death and replacement which is the gist of
human life. Then at the expression of
68

SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

their faces she seemed to recollect. " Of
course," she said, and then with a transi-
tion that made pursuit difficult, she agreed
with Adeline. " It is different," she said.
" It is wonderful. One feels so alike, you
know, and so different. That's just where
it is so wonderful. Do I look — ? And
yet you know I have never had my hair
up, nor worn a dressing gown before to-
day."

"What do you wear?" asked Miss
Glendower. "Very charming things, I
suppose."

" It's a different costume altogether,"
said the Sea Lady, brushing away a
crumb.

Just for a moment Mrs. Bunting re-
garded her visitor fixedly. She had, I
fancy, in that moment, an indistinct, im-
perfect glimpse of pagan possibilities.
But there, you know, was the Sea Lady in
her wrapper, so palpably a lady, with her
69

THE SEA LADY

pretty hair brought up to date and such a
frank innocence in her eyes, that Mrs.
Bunting's suspicions vanished as they
came.

(But I am not so sure of Adeline.)

70

CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE EPISODE OF THE VARIOUS
JOURNALISTS

I

THE remarkable thing is that the Bunt-
ings really carried out the programme Mrs.
Bunting laid down. For a time at least
they positively succeeded in converting the
Sea Lady into a credible human invalid,
in spite of the galaxy of witnesses to the
lady's landing and in spite of the severe in-
ternal dissensions that presently broke out.
In spite, moreover, of the fact that one of
the maids — they found out which only
long after — told the whole story under
vows to her very superior young man who
told it next Sunday to a rising journalist
who was sitting about on the Leas matur-

THE SEA LADY

ing a descriptive article. The rising jour-
nalist was incredulous. But he went about
enquiring. In the end he thought it good
enough to go upon. He found in several
quarters a vague but sufficient rumour of
a something ; for the maid's young man
was a conversationalist when he had any-
thing to say.

Finally the rising journalist went and
sounded the people on the two chief Folke-
stone papers and found the thing had just
got to them. They were inclined to pre-
tend they hadn't heard of it, after the
fashion of local papers when confronted
by the abnormal, but the atmosphere of
enterprise that surrounded the rising jour-
nalist woke them up. He perceived he
had done so and that he had no time to
lose. So while they engaged in inventing
representatives to enquire, he went off and
telephoned to the Daily Gunfire and the
New Paper, When they answered he was
72

THE JOURNALISTS' EPISODE

positive and earnest. He staked his reputa-
tion— the reputation of a rising journalist !

" I swear there's something up," he
said. " Get in first— that's all."

He had some reputation, I say — and
he had staked it. The Daily Gunfire was
sceptical but precise, and the New Paper
sprang a headline "A Mermaid at last !"

You might well have thought the thing
was out after that, but it wasn't. There
are things one doesn't believe even if they
are printed in a halfpenny paper. To find
the reporters hammering at their doors, so
to speak, and fended off only for a time
by a proposal that they should call again ;
to see their incredible secret glaringly in
print, did indeed for a moment seem a
hopeless exposure to both the Buntings
and the Sea Lady. Already they could
see the story spreading, could imagine the
imminent rush of intimate enquiries, the
tripod strides of a multitude of cameras,
6 73

THE SEA LADY

the crowds watching the windows, the
horrors of a great publicity. All the
Buntings and Mabel were aghast, simply
aghast. Adeline was not so much aghast
as excessively annoyed at this imminent
and, so far as she was concerned, absolute-
ly irrelevant publicity. 4< They will never
dare — " she said, and " Consider how it
affects Harry!" and at the earliest oppor-
tunity she retired to her own room. The
others, with a certain disregard of her of-
fence, sat around the Sea Lady's couch —
she had scarcely touched her breakfast —
and canvassed the coming terror.

" They will put our photographs in
the papers," said the elder Miss Bunting.

" Well, they won't put mine in," said
her sister. " It's horrid. I shall go right
off now and have it taken again."

" They'll interview the Ded !"

" No, no," said Mr. Bunting terrified.

" Your mother "

74

THE JOURNALISTS7 EPISODE

" It's your place, my dear," said Mrs.
Bunting.

" But the Bed—" said Fred.

" I couldn't," said Mr. Bunting.

" Well, some one '11 have to tell 'em
anyhow," said Mrs. Bunting. " You
know, they will "

"But it isn't at all what I wanted,"
wailed the Sea Lady, with the Daily Gun-
fire in her hand. " Can't it be stopped ?"

" You don't know our journalists,"
said Fred.

The tact of my cousin Melville saved
the situation. He had dabbled in journal-
ism and talked with literary fellows like
myself. And literary fellows like myself
are apt at times to be very free and out-
spoken about the press. He heard of the
Buntings' shrinking terror of publicity
as soon as he arrived, a perfect clam-
our— an almost exultant clamour indeed,
of shrinking terror, and he caught the
75

THE SEA LADY

Sea Lady's eye and took his line there
and then.

" It's not an occasion for sticking at
trifles, Mrs. Bunting," he said. " But I
think we can save the situation all the
same. You're too hopeless. We must
put our foot down at once ; that's all.
Let me see these reporter fellows and
write to the London dailies. I think I
can take a line that will settle them."

"Eh? "said Fred.

" I can take a line that will stop it,
trust me."

"What, altogether?"

"Altogether."

" How ?" said Fred and Mrs. Bunting.
" You're not going to bribe them ! "

" Bribe !" said Mr. Bunting. "We're
not in France. You can't bribe a British
paper."

(A sort of subdued cheer went around
from the assembled Buntings.)

THE JOURNALISTS' EPISODE

" You leave it to me," said Melville, in
his element.

And with earnestly expressed but not
very confident wishes for his success, they
did.

He managed the thing admirably.

" What's this about a mermaid ? " he
demanded of the local journalists when
they returned. They travelled together
for company, being, so to speak, emer-
gency journalists, compositors in their
milder moments, and unaccustomed to
these higher aspects of journalism.
" What's this about a mermaid ? " repeated
my cousin, while they waived precedence
dumbly one to another.

44 I believe some one's been letting
you in," said my cousin Melville. " Just
imagine ! — a mermaid ! "

"That's what we thought," said the
younger of the two emergency journalists.
" We knew it was some sort of hoax, you
77

THE SEA LADY

know. Only the New Paper giving it
a headline "

" I'm amazed even Banghurst — " said
my cousin Melville.

" It's in the Daily Gunfire as well,"
said the older of the two emergency jour-
nalists.

" What's one more or less of these ha'-
penny fever rags ? " cried my cousin with
a ringing scorn. " Surely you're not
going to take your Folkestone news from
mere London papers."

" But how did the story come about ?"
began the older emergency journalist.

" That's not my affair."

The younger emergency journalist had
an inspiration. He produced a note book
from his breast pocket. " Perhaps, sir,
you wouldn't mind suggesting to us some-
thing we might say "

My cousin Melville complied.

78

THE JOUKNALISTS' EPISODE

II

The rising young journalist who had
first got wind of the business — who must
not for a moment be confused with the
two emergency journalists heretofore de-
scribed— came to Banghurst next night in
a state of strange exultation. " I've been
through with it and I've seen her," he
panted. " I waited about outside and saw
her taken into the carriage. I've talked
to one of the maids — I got into the house
under pretence of being a telephone man
to see their telephone — I spotted the wire
— and it's a fact. A positive fact — she's
a mermaid with a tail — a proper mer-
maid's tail. I've got here "

He displayed sheets.

" Whaddyer talking about ? " said
Banghurst from his littered desk, eye-
ing the sheets with apprehensive ani-
mosity.

79

THE SEA LADY

" The mermaid — there really is a mer-
maid. At Folkestone."

Banghurst turned away from him and
pawed at his pen tray. " Whad if there
is ! " he said after a pause.

" But it's proved. That note you
printed "

" That note I printed was a mistake if
there's anything of that sort going, young
man." Banghurst remained an obstinate
expansion of back.

"How?"

" We don't deal in mermaids here."

" But you're not going to let it drop ? "

" I am."

" But there she is ! "

" Let her be." He turned on the rising
young journalist, and his massive face was
unusually massive and his voice fine and
full and fruity. " Do you think we're go-
ing to make our public believe anything
simply because it's true ? They know per-
80

"Stuff that the public won't believe aren't facts/

THE JOURNALISTS' EPISODE

fectly well what they are going to believe
and what they aren't going to believe, and
they aren't going to believe anything about
mermaids — you bet your hat. I don't care
if the whole damned beach was littered
with mermaids. — not the whole damned
beach ! We've got our reputation to keep
up. See ? . . . Look here ! — you don't
learn journalism as I hoped you'd do. It
was you what brought in all that stuff
about a discovery in chemistry "

" It's true."

" Ugh ! "

" I had it from a Fellow of the Royal
Society "

" I don't care if you had it from — any-
body. Stuff that the public won't believe
aren't facts. Being true only makes 'em
worse. They buy our paper to swallow it
and it's got to go down easy. When I
printed you that note and headline I
thought you was up to a lark. I thought
Si

THE SEA LADY

you was on to a mixed bathing scandal
or something of that sort — with juice in
it. The sort of thing that all understand.
You know when you went down to Folke-
stone you were going to describe what
Salisbury and all the rest of them wear
upon the Leas. And start a discussion on
the acclimatisation of the cafe*. And all
that. And then you get on to this (un-
printable epithet) nonsense ! "

" But Lord Salisbury — he doesn't go to
Folkestone."

Banghurst shrugged his shoulders over
a hopeless case. " What the deuce," he
said, addressing his inkpot in plaintive
tones, " does that matter ? "

The young man reflected. He ad-
dressed Banghurst's back after a pause.
His voice had flattened a little. " I might
go over this and do it up as a lark per-
haps. Make it a comic dialogue sketch
with a man who really believed in it — or
82

THE JOTJKNALISTS' EPISODE

something like that. It's a beastly lot of
copy to get slumped, you know."

" Nohow," said Banghurst. " Not in
any shape. No ! Why ! They'd think it
clever. They'd think you was making
game of them. They hate things they
think are clever ! "

The young man made as if to reply,
but Banghurst's back expressed quite
clearly that the interview was at an
end.

" Nohow," repeated Banghurst just
when it seemed he had finished alto-
gether.

" I may take it to the Gunfire then?"

Banghurst suggested an alternative.

" Very well," said the young man,
heated, "the Gunfire it is."

But in that he was reckoning without
the editor of the Gunfire.

THE SEA LADY

III

It must have been quite soon after
that, that I myself heard the first mention
of the mermaid, little recking that at
last it would fall to me to write her his-
tory. I was on one of my rare visits to
London, and Micklethwaite was giving
me lunch at the Penwiper Club, certainly
one of the best dozen literary clubs in
London. I noted the rising young jour-
nalist at a table near the door, lunching
alone. All about him tables were vacant,
though the other parts of the room were
crowded. He sat with his face towards
the door, and he kept looking up when-
ever any one came in, as if he ex-
pected some one who never came. Once
distinctly I saw him beckon to a man,
but the man did not respond.

" Look here, Micklethwaite," I said,
"why is everybody avoiding that man
84

THE JOURNALISTS' EPISODE

over there? I noticed just now in the
smoking-room that he seemed to be try-
ing to get into conversation with some
one and that a kind of taboo "

Micklethwaite stared over his fork.
" Ra-ther," he said.

"But what's he done?"

" He's a fool," said Micklethwaite
with his mouth full, evidently annoyed.
" Ugh," he said as soon as he was free to
do so.

I waited a little while.

" What's he done ? " I ventured.

Micklethwaite did not answer for a
moment and crammed things into his
mouth vindictively, bread and all sorts of
things. Then leaning towards me in a
confidential manner he made indignant
noises which I could not clearly distin-
guish as words.

" Oh ! " I said, when he had done.

" Yes," said Micklethwaite. He swal-

85
* *

THE SEA LADY

lowed and then poured himself wine —
splashing the tablecloth.

"He had me for an hour very nearly
the other day."

"Yes?" I said.

" Silly fool," said Micklethwaite.

I was afraid it was all over, but luckily
he gave me an opening again after gulp-
ing down his wine.

" He leads you on to argue," he said.

-That ?"

"That he can't prove it."

"Yes?"

"And then he shows you he can.
Just showing off how damned ingenious
he is."

I was a little confused. " Prove what ? "
I asked.

" Haven't I been telling you ? " said
Micklethwaite, growing very red. " About
this confounded mermaid of his at Folke-
stone."

86

* *

THE JOURNALISTS' EPISODE

" He says there is one ? "

"Yes, he does," said Micklethwaite,
going purple and staring at me very hard.
He seemed to ask mutely whether I of
all people proposed to turn on him and
back up this infamous scoundrel. I
thought for a moment he would have
apoplexy, but happily he remembered his
duty as my host. So he turned very sud-
denly on a meditative waiter for not re-
moving our plates.

"Had any golf lately?" I said to
Micklethwaite, when the plates and the
remains of the waiter had gone away.
Golf always does Micklethwaite good ex-
cept when he is actually playing. Then, I
am told — If I were Mrs. Bunting I
should break off and raise my eyebrows
and both hands at this point, to indicate
how golf acts on Micklethwaite when he ,
is playing.

I turned my mind to feigning an in-

THE SEA LADY

terest in golf — a game that in truth I de-
spise and hate as I despise and hate noth-
ing else in this world. Imagine a great
fat creature like Micklethwaite, a creature
who ought to wear a turban and a long
black robe to hide his grossness, whacking
a little white ball for miles and miles with
a perfect surgery of instruments, whacking
it either with a babyish solemnity or a
childish rage as luck may have decided,
whacking away while his country goes to
the devil, and incidentally training an in-
nocent-eyed little boy to swear and be a
tip-hunting loafer. That's golf ! How-
ever, I controlled my all too facile sneer
and talked of golf and the relative merits
of golf links as I might talk to a child
about buns or distract a puppy with the
whisper of " rats," and when at last I could
look at the rising young journalist again
our lunch had come to an end.

I saw that he was talking with a
•88

THE JOUKNALISTS' EPISODE

greater air of freedom than it is usual to
display to club waiters, to the man who
held his coat. The man looked incredu-
lous but respectful, and was answering
shortly but politely.

When we went out this little conversa-
tion was still going on. The waiter was
holding the rising young journalist's soft
felt hat and the rising young journalist
was fumbling in his coat pocket with a
thick mass of papers.

" It's tremendous. I've got most of it
here," he was saying as we went by. " I
don't know if you'd care "

" I get very little time for reading,
sir," the waiter was replying.

89

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE QUALITY OF PARKER

I

So far I have been very full, I know,
and verisimilitude has been my watchword
rather than the true affidavit style. But if
I have made it clear to the reader just
how the Sea Lady landed and just how it
was possible for her to land and become a
member of human society without any
considerable excitement on the part of
that society, such poor pains as I have
taken to tint and shadow and embellish
the facts at my disposal will not have been
taken in vain. She positively and quietly
settled down with the Buntings. Within
a fortnight she had really settled down so
thoroughly that, save for her exceptional
90

^^ -

She positively and quietly settled down with the Buntings.

THE QUALITY OF PARKER

beauty and charm and the occasional faint
touches of something a little indefinable
in her smile, she had become a quite pass-
able and credible human being. She was
a cripple, indeed, and her lower limb was
most pathetically swathed and put in a
sort of case, but it was quite generally un-
derstood— I am afraid at Mrs. Bunting's
initiative — that presently they — Mrs. Bunt-
ing said "they," which was certainly al-
most as far or even a little farther than le-
gitimate prevarication may go — would be
as well as ever.

" Of course," said Mrs. Bunting, " she
will never be able to bicycle again "

That was the sort of glamour she
threw about it.

II

In Parker it is indisputable that the
Sea Lady found — or at least had found
for her by Mrs. Bunting — a treasure of

THE SEA LADY

the richest sort. Parker was still falla-
ciously young, but she had been maid to a
lady from India who had been in a "case "
and had experienced and overcome cross-
examination. She had also been deceived
by a young man, whom she had fancied
greatly, only to find him walking out with
another — contrary to her inflexible sense
of correctness — in the presence of which
all other things are altogether vain. Life
she had resolved should have no further
surprises for her. She looked out on its
(largely improper) pageant with an ex-
pression of alert impartiality in her hazel
eyes, calm, doing her specific duty, and
entirely declining to participate further.
She always kept her elbows down by her
side and her hands always just in contact,
and it was impossible for the most power-
ful imagination to conceive her under any
circumstances as being anything but ab-
solutely straight and clean and neat. And
92

THE QUALITY OF PARKER

her voice was always under all circum-
stances low and wonderfully distinct — just
to an infinitesimal degree indeed " minc-
ing."

Mrs. Bunting had been a little nervous
when it came to the point. It was Mrs.
Bunting of course who engaged her, be-
cause the Sea Lady was so entirely with-
out experience. But certainly Mrs. Bunt-
ing's nervousness was thrown away.

" You understand," said Mrs. Bunting,
taking a plunge at it, " that — that she is
an invalid."

"I didnt, Mem," replied Parker re-
spectfully, and evidently quite willing to
understand anything as part of her duty
in this world.

" In fact," said Mrs. Bunting, rubbing
the edge of the tablecloth daintily with
her gloved finger and watching the opera-
tion with interest, "as a matter of fact,
she has a mermaid's tail."
93

THE SEA LADY

" Mermaid's tail ! Indeed, Mem ! And
is it painful at all ? "

" Oh, dear, no, it involves no incon-
venience— nothing. Except — you under-
stand, there is a need of — discretion."

" Of course, Mem," said Parker, as who
should say, " there always is."

" We particularly don't want the serv-
ants "

" The lower servants — No, Mem."

" You understand ? " and Mrs. Bunting
looked up again and regarded Parker
calmly.

" Precisely, Mem ! " said Parker, with a
face unmoved, and so they came to the
question of terms. " It all passed off
most satisfactorily," said Mrs. Bunting,
taking a deep breath at the mere memory
of that moment. And it is clear that
Parker was quite of her opinion.

She was not only discreet but really
clever and handy. From the very outset
94

THE QUALITY OF PARKER

she grasped the situation, unostentatiously
but very firmly. It was Parker who con-
trived the sort of violin case for It, and
who made the tea gown extension that
covered the case's arid contours. It was
Parker who suggested an invalid's chair
for use indoors and in the garden, and a
carrying chair for the staircase. Hitherto
Fred Bunting had been on hand, at last
even in excessive abundance, whenever
the Sea Lady lay in need of masculine
arms. But Parker made it clear at once
that that was not at all in accordance with
her ideas, and so earned the lifelong grati-
tude of Mabel Glendower. And Parker
too spoke out for drives, and suggested
with an air of Tightness that left nothing
else to be done, the hire of a carriage and
pair for the season — to the equal delight
of the Buntings and the Sea Lady. It
was Parker who dictated the daily drive
up to the eastern end of the Leas and the
95

THE SEA LADY

Sea Lady's transfer, and the manner of
the Sea Lady's transfer, to the bath chair
in which she promenaded the Leas. There
seemed to be nowhere that it was pleas-
ant and proper for the Sea Lady to go
that Parker did not swiftly and correctly
indicate it and the way to get to it, and
there seems to have been nothing that it
was really undesirable the Sea Lady should
do and anywhere- that it was really unde-
sirable that she should go, that Parker
did not at once invisibly but effectively
interpose a bar. It was Parker who re-
leased the Sea Lady from being a sort of
private and peculiar property in the Bunt-
ing household and carried her off to a be-
coming position in the world, when the
crisis came. In little things as in great
she failed not. It was she who made it
luminous that the Sea Lady's card plate
was not yet engraved and printed (" Miss
Doris Thalassia Waters " was the pleasant
96

THE QUALITY OF PARKER

and appropriate name with which the Sea
Lady came primed), and who replaced the
box of the presumably dank and drowned
and dripping "Tom" by a jewel case, a
dressing bag and the first of the Sea
Lady's trunks.

On a thousand little occasions this
Parker showed a sense of propriety that
was penetratingly fine. For example, in
the shop one day when " things " of an
intimate sort were being purchased, she
suddenly intervened.

" There are stockings, Mem," she said
in a discreet undertone, behind, but not
too vulgarly behind, a fluttering straight
hand.

"Stockings!" cried Mrs. Bunting.
"But !" /

" I think, Mem, she should have stock- /
ings," said Parker, quietly but very firmly.

And come to think of it, why should
an unavoidable deficiency in a lady excuse
97

THE SEA LADY

one that can be avoided ? It's there we
touch the very quintessence and central
principle of the proper life.

But Mrs. Bunting, you l^now, would
never have seen it like that.

Ill

Let me add here, regretfully but with
infinite respect, one other thing about
Parker, and then she shall drop into her
proper place.

I must confess, with a slight tinge of
humiliation, that I pursued this young
woman to her present situation at High-
ton Towers — maid she is to that eminent
religious and social propagandist, the Lady
Jane Glanville. There were certain details
of which I stood in need, certain scenes
and conversations of which my passion
for verisimilitude had scarcely a crumb to
go upon. And from first to last, what she
98

THE QUALITY OF PARKER

must have seen and learnt and inferred
would amount practically to everything.

I put this to her frankly. She made
no pretence of not understanding me nor
of ignorance of certain hidden things.
When I had finished she regarded me
with a level regard.

" I couldn't think of it, sir," she said.
" It wouldn't be at all according to my
ideas."

" But ! — It surely couldn't possibly hurt
you now to tell me."

" I'm afraid I couldn't, sir."

" It couldn't hurt anyone."

" It isn't that, sir."

" I should see you didn't lose by it,
you know."

She looked at me politely, having said
what she intended to say.

And, in spite of what became at last
very fine and handsome inducements, that
remained the inflexible Parker's reply.
99

THE SEA LADY

Even after I had come to an end with my
finesse and attempted to bribe her in the
grossest manner, she displayed nothing but
a becoming respect for my impregnable
social superiority.

" I couldn't think of it, sir," she re-
peated. " It wouldn't be at all according
to my ideas."

And if in the end you should find this
story to any extent vague or incomplete,
I trust you will remember how the inflexi-
ble severity of Parker's ideas stood in my
way.

100

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE ABSENCE AND RETURN OF
MR. HARRY CHATTERIS

I

THESE digressions about Parker and
the journalists have certainly led me astray
from the story a little. You will, however,
understand that while the rising young
journalist was still in pursuit of informa-
tion, Hope and Banghurst, and Parker
merely a budding perfection, the carriage
not even thought of, things were already
developing in that bright little establish-
ment beneath the evergreen oaks on the
Folkestone Riviera. So soon as the minds
of the Buntings ceased to be altogether
focused upon this new and amazing social
addition, they — of all people — had most
101

THE SEA LADY

indisputably discovered, it became at first
faintly and then very clearly evident that
their own simple pleasure in the possession
of a guest so beautiful as Miss Waters, so
solidly wealthy and — in a manner — so dis-
tinguished, was not entirely shared by the
two young ladies who were to have been
their principal guests for the season.

This little rift was perceptible the very
first time Mrs. Bunting had an opportunity
of talking over her new arrangements with
Miss Glendower.

" And is she really going to stay with
you all the summer?" said Adeline.
" Surely, dear, you don't mind?"
" It takes me a little by surprise."

" She's asked me, my dear "

" I'm thinking of Harry. If the gen-
eral election comes on in September — and
every one seems to think it will — You
promised you would let us inundate you
with electioneering."
1 02

ME. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

" But do you think she-

" She will be dreadfully in the way."

She added after an interval, " She
stops my working."

"But, my dear!"

" She's out of harmony," said Adeline.

Mrs. Bunting looked out of her win-
dow at the tamarisk and the sea. " I'm
sure I wouldn't do anything to hurt
Harry's prospects. You know how en-
thusiastic we all are. Randolph would do
anything. But are you sure she will be
in the way ? "

" What else can she be?"

" She might help even."

"Oh, help!"

" She might canvass. She's very at-
tractive, you know, dear."

" Not to me," said Miss Glendower.
" I don't trust her."

" But to some people. And as Harry
says, at election times every one who can
103

THE SEA LADY

do anything must be let do it. Cut them
— do anything afterwards, but at the time
— you know he talked of it when Mr.
Fison and he were here. If you left elec-
tioneering only to the really nice peo-
ple "

" It was Mr. Fison said that, not Har-
ry. And besides, she wouldn't help."

" I think you misjudge her there, dear.
She has been asking "

-To help?"

"Yes, and all about it," said Mrs.
Bunting, with a transient pink. " She
keeps asking questions about why we are
having the election and what it is all about,
and why Harry is a candidate and all that.
She wants to go into it quite deeply. /
can't answer half the things she asks."

" And that's why she keeps up those
long conversations with Mr. Melville, I
suppose, and why Fred goes about neglect-
ing Mabel "

104

MR HAKEY CHATTERIS KETUKNS

" My dear ! " said Mrs. Bunting.

" I wouldn't have her canvassing with
us for anything," said Miss Glendower.
" She'd spoil everything. She is frivolous
and satirical. She looks at you with
incredulous eyes, she seems to blight all
one's earnestness. ... I don't think you
quite understand, dear Mrs. Bunting, what
this election and my studies mean to me
— and Harry. She comes across all that
— like a contradiction."

" Surely, my dear ! I've never heard
her contradict."

" Oh, she doesn't contradict. But
she — There is something about her —
One feels that things that are most
important and vital are nothing to her.
Don't you feel it ? She comes from an-
other world to us."

Mrs. Bunting remained judicial. Ade-
line dropped to a lower key again. " I
think," she said, " anyhow, that we're tak-
s 105

THE SEA LADY

ing her very easily. How do we know
what she is ? Down there, out there, she
may be anything. She may have had ex-
cellent reasons for coming to land "

" My dear ! " cried Mrs. Bunting. " Is
that charity ? "

" How do they live ? "

" If she hadn't lived nicely I'm sure
she couldn't behave so nicely."

" Besides — coming here ! She had no
invitation "

" I've invited her now," said Mrs.
Bunting gently.

" You could hardly help yourself. I
only hope your kindness "

" It's not a kindness," said Mrs. Bunt-
ing, " it's a duty. If she were only half
as charming as she is. You seem to for-
get " — her voice dropped — " what it is she
comes for."

" That's what I want to know."

" I'm sure in these days, with so much
1 06

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

materialism about and such wickedness
everywhere, when everybody who has a
soul seems trying to lose it, to find any
one who hadn't a soul and who is trying
to find one "

" But is she trying to get one ? "

" Mr. Flange comes twice every week.
He would come oftener, as you know, if
there wasn't so much confirmation about."

"And when he comes he sits and
touches her hand if he can, and he talks in
his lowest voice, and she sits and smiles —
she almost laughs outright at the things
he says."

" Because he has to win his way with
her. Surely Mr. Flange may do what he
can to make religion attractive ? "

" I don't believe she believes she will
get a soul. I don't believe she wants one
a bit."

She turned towards the door as if she
had done.

107

THE SEA LADY

Mrs. Bunting's pink was now perma-
nent. She had brought up a son and two
daughters, and besides she had brought
down a husband to " My dear, how was /
to know ? " and when it was necessary to
be firm — even with Adeline Glendower —
she knew how to be firm just as well as
anybody.

" My dear," she began in her very
firmest quiet manner, " I am positive you
misjudge Miss Waters. Trivial she may
be — on the surface at any rate. Perhaps
she laughs and makes fun a little. There
are different ways of looking at things.
But I am sure that at bottom she is just
as serious, just as grave, as — any one. You
judge her hastily. I am sure if you knew
her better — as I do "

Mrs. Bunting left an eloquent pause.

Miss Glendower had two little pink
flushes in her cheeks. She turned with
her hand on the door.
108

ME. HAEKY CHATTEEIS EETUENS

" At any rate," she said, " I am sure
that Harry will agree with me that she
can be no help to our cause. We have
our work to do and it is something more
than just vulgar electioneering. We have
to develop and establish ideas. Harry has
views that are new and wide-reaching.
We want to put our whole strength into
this work. Now especially. And her
presence "

She paused for a moment. " It is a
digression. She divides things. She puts
it all wrong. She has a way of concen-
trating attention about herself. She alters
the values of things. She prevents my
being single-minded, she will prevent
Harry being single-minded "

" I think, my dear, that you might
trust my judgment a little," said Mrs.
Bunting and paused.

Miss Glendower opened her mouth
and shut it again, without speaking. It be-
109

THE SEA LADY

came evident finality was attained. Noth-
ing remained to be said but the regrettable.

The door opened and closed smartly
and Mrs. Bunting was alone.

Within an hour they all met at the
luncheon table and Adeline's behaviour to
the Sea Lady and to Mrs. Bunting was as
pleasant and alert as any highly earnest
and intellectual young lady's could be.
And all that Mrs. Bunting said and did
tended with what people call infinite tact
— which really, you know, means a great
deal more tact than is comfortable — to de-
velop and expose the more serious aspect
of the Sea Lady's mind. Mr. Bunting
was unusually talkative and told them all
about a glorious project he had just heard
of, to cut out the rather shrubby and weedy
front of the Leas and stick in something
between a wine vault and the Crystal Pal-
ace as a Winter Garden — which seemed
to him a very excellent idea indeed.

1 10

ME. HAEEY CHATTEEIS EETUENS

II

It is time now to give some impression
of the imminent Chatteris, who for all his
late appearance is really the chief human
being in my cousin Melville's story. It
happens that I met him with some fre-
quency in my university days and after-
wards ever and again I came upon him.
He was rather a brilliant man at the uni-
versity, smart without being vulgar and
clever for all that. He was remarkably
good-looking from the very onset of his
manhood and without being in any way a
showy spendthrift, was quite magnificently
extravagant. There was trouble in his
last year, something hushed up about a
girl or woman in London, but his family
had it all over with him, and his uncle,
the Earl of Beechcroft, settled some of his
bills. Not all — for the family is com-
mendably free from sentimental excesses
in

THE SEA LADY

— but enough to make him comfortable
again. The family is not a rich one and
it further abounds in an extraordinary
quantity of rather frowsy, loose-tongued
aunts — I never knew a family quite so
rich in old aunts. But Chatteris was so
good-looking, easy-mannered, and clever,
that they seemed to agree almost without
discussion to pull him through. They
hunted about for something that would
be really remunerative without being
laborious or too commercial ; and mean-
while— after the extraordinary craving of
his aunt, Lady Poynting Mallow, to see
him acting had been overcome by the
united efforts of the more religious section
of his aunts — Chatteris set himself seri-
ously to the higher journalism — that is
to say, the journalism that dines any-
where, gets political tips after dinner, and
is always acceptable — if only to avoid
thirteen articles — in a half-crown review.
112

ME. HAKEY CHATTEEIS EETUENS

In addition, he wrote some very passable
verse and edited Jane Austen for the only
publisher who had not already reprinted
the works of that classic lady.

His verse, like himself, was shapely and
handsome, and, like his face, it suggested
to the penetrating eye certain reservations
and indecisions. There was just that touch
of refinement that is weakness in the pub-
lic man. But as yet he was not a public
man ; he was known to be energetic and
his work was gathering attention as always
capable and occasionally brilliant. His
aunts declared he was ripening, that any
defect in vigour he displayed was the in-
completeness of the process, and decided
he should go to America, where vigour
and vigorous opportunities abound, and
there, I gather, he came upon something
like a failure. Something happened, in-
deed, quite a lot happened. He came
back unmarried — and vid the South Seas,
"3

THE SEA LADY

Australasia and India. And Lady Poynt-
ing Mallow publicly told him he was a
fool, when he got back.

What happened in America, even if
one does not consult contemporary Amer-
ican papers, is still very difficult to deter-
mine. There appear to have been the
daughter of a millionaire and something
like an engagement in the story. Ac-
cording to the New York Yell, one of the
smartest, crispest, and altogether most rep-
resentative papers in America, there was
also the daughter of some one else, whom
the Yell interviewed, or professed to in-
terview, under the heading :

AN ARISTOCRATIC BRITISHER

TRIFLES WITH

A PURE AMERICAN GIRL
INTERVIEW WITH THE VICTIM

OF HIS

HEARTLESS LEVITY
114

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

But this some one else was, I am in-
clined to think in spite of her excellently
executed portrait, merely a brilliant stroke
of modern journalism, the Yell having
got wind of the sudden retreat of Chat-
teris and inventing a reason in preference
to discovering one. Wensleydale tells me
the true impetus to bolt was the merest
trifle. The daughter of the millionaire,
being a bright and spirited girl, had under-
gone interviewing on the subject of her
approaching marriage, on marriage in gen-
eral, on social questions of various sorts,
and on the relations of the British and
American peoples, and he seems to have
found the thing in his morning paper.
It took him suddenly and he lost his head.
And once he started, he seems to have
lacked the power of mind to turn about
and come back. The affair was a mess,
the family paid some more of his bills and
shirked others, and Chatteris turned up in

THE SEA LADY

London again after a time, with some-
what diminished glory and a series of let-
ters on Imperial Affairs, each headed with
the quotation : " What do they know of
England who only England know ? "

Of course people of England learnt
nothing of the real circumstances of the
case, but it was fairly obvious that he had
gone to America and come back empty-
handed.

And that was how, in the course of
some years, he came to Adeline Glen-
dower, of whose special gifts as his helper
and inspiration you have already heard
from Mrs. Bunting. When he became
engaged to her, the family, which had long
craved to forgive him — Lady Poynting
Mallow as a matter of fact had done so —
brightened wonderfully. And after con-
siderable obscure activities he declared
himself a philanthropic Liberal with open
spaces in his platform, and in a position,
116

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

and ready as a beginning, to try the qual-
ity of the conservative South.

He was away making certain decisive
arrangements, in Paris and elsewhere, at
the time of the landing of the Sea Lady.
Before the matter was finally settled it
was necessary that something should be
said to a certain great public character,
and then he was to return and tell Ade-
line. And every one was expecting him
daily, including, it is now indisputable, the
Sea Lady.

Ill

The meeting of Miss Glendower and
her affianced lover on his return from
Paris was one of those scenes in this story
for which I have scarcely an inkling of the
true details. He came to Folkestone and
stopped at the M£tropole, the Bunting
house being full and the Mdtropole being
the nearest hotel to Sandgate ; and he
117

THE SEA LADY

walked down in the afternoon and asked
for Adeline, which was pretty rather than
correct. I gather that they met in the
drawing-room, and as Chatteris closed the
door behind him, I imagine there was
something in the nature of a caress.

I must confess I envy the freedom of
the novelist who can take you behind such
a locked door as this and give you all that
such persons say and do. But with the
strongest will in the world to blend the
little scraps of fact I have into a continu-
ous sequence of events, I falter at this
occasion. After all, I never saw Adeline
at all until after all these things were over,
and what is she now ? A rather tall, a
rather restless and active woman, very
keen and obvious in public affairs — with
something gone out of her. Melville once
saw a gleam of that, but for the most part
Melville never liked her ; she had a wider
grasp of things than he, and he was a little
118

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

afraid of her ; she was in some inexplicable
way neither a pretty woman nor a " dear
lady " nor a grande dame nor totally in-
significant, and a heretic therefore in Mel-
ville's scheme of things. He gives me
small material for that earlier Adeline.
" She posed," he says ; she was " political,"
and she was always reading Mrs. Hum-
phry Ward.

The last Melville regarded as the most
heinous offence. It is not the least of my
cousin's weaknesses that he regards this
great novelist as an extremely corrupting
influence for intelligent girls. She makes
them good and serious in the wrong way,
he says. Adeline, he asserts, was abso-
lutely built on her. She was always at-
tempting to be the incarnation of Mar-
cella. It was he who had perverted Mrs.
Bunting's mind to adopt this fancy. But
I don't believe for a moment in this
idea of girls building themselves on
119

THE SEA LADY

heroines in fiction. These are matters of
elective affinity, and unless some bully-
ing critic or preacher sends us astray,
we take each to our own novelist as
the souls in the Swedenborgian system
take to their hells. Adeline took to the
imaginary Marcella. There was, Melville
says, the strongest likeness in their mental
atmosphere. They had the same defects,
a bias for superiority — to use his expres-
sive phrase — the same disposition towards
arrogant benevolence, that same obtuse-
ness to little shades of feeling that leads
people to speak habitually of the " Lower
Classes," and to think in the vein of that
phrase. They certainly had the same vir-
tues, a conscious and conscientious integ-
rity, a hard nobility without one touch of
magic, an industrious thoroughness. More
than in anything else, Adeline delighted
in her novelist's thoroughness, her freedom
from impressionism, the patient resolution
120

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

with which she went into the corners and
swept under the mat of every incident.
And it would be easy to argue from that,
that Adeline behaved as Mrs. Ward's
most characteristic heroine behaved, on an
analogous occasion.

Marcella we know — at least after her
heart was changed — would have clung
to him. There would have been a mo-
ment of high emotion in which thoughts
— of the highest class — mingled with
the natural ambition of two people in
the prime of life and power. Then she
would have receded with a quick mo-
vement and listened with her beautiful
hand pensive against her cheek, while
Chatteris began to sum up the forces
against him — to speculate on the ac-
tion of this group and that. Some-
thing infinitely tender and maternal
would have spoken in her, pledging her
to the utmost help that love and a wom-

9 121

THE SEA LADY

an can give. She would have produced
in Chatteris that exquisite mingled im-
pression of grace, passion, self-yielding,
which in all its infinite variations and
repetitions made up for him the con-
stant poem of her beauty.

But that is the dream and not the real-
ity. So Adeline might have dreamt of
behaving, but — she was not Marcella,
and only wanting to be, and he was not
only not Maxwell but he had no intention
of being Maxwell anyhow. If he had had
an opportunity of becoming Maxwell he
would probably have rejected it with ex-
treme incivility. So they met like two
unheroic human beings, with shy and
clumsy movements and, I suppose, fairly
honest eyes. Something there was in the
nature of a caress, I believe, and then I
incline to fancy she said "Well?" and I
think he must have answered, " It's all
right." After that, and rather allusively,
122

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

with a backward jerk of the head at inter-
vals as it were towards the great person-
age, Chatteris must have told her partic-
ulars. He must have told her that he
was going to contest Hythe and that the
little difficulty with the Glasgow commis-
sion agent who wanted to run the Radical
ticket as a " Man of Kent " had been set-
tled without injury to the party (such as it
is). Assuredly they talked politics, be-
cause soon after, when they came into the
garden side by side to where Mrs. Bunt-
ing and the Sea Lady sat watching the
girls play croquet, Adeline was in full
possession of all these facts. I fancy that
for such a couple as they were, such inti-
mation of success, such earnest topics, re-
placed, to a certain extent at any rate, the
vain repetition of vulgar endearments.

The Sea Lady appears to have been
the first to see them. " Here he is," she
said abruptly.

123

THE SEA LADY

" Whom ? " said Mrs. Bunting, glanc-
ing up at eyes that were suddenly eager,
and then following their glance towards
Chatteris.

" Your other son," said the Sea Lady,
jesting unheeded.

" It's Harry and Adeline ! " cried Mrs.
Bunting. " Don't they make a handsome
couple ? "

But the Sea Lady made no reply, and
leaned back, scrutinising their advance.
Certainly they made a handsome pair.
Coming out of the veranda into the blaze
of the sun and across the trim lawn towards
the shadow of the ilex trees, they were lit,
as it were, with a more glorious limelight,
and displayed like actors on a stage more
spacious than the stage of any theatre.
The figure of Chatteris must have come
out tall and fair and broad, a little sunburnt,
and I gather even then a little preoccu-
pied, as indeed he always seemed to be in
124

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

those latter days. And beside him Ade-
line, glancing now up at him and now to-
wards the audience under the trees, dark
and a little flushed, rather tall — though
not so tall as Marcella seems to have
been — and, you know, without any in-
structions from any novel-writer in the
world, glad.

Chatteris did not- discover that there
was any one but Buntings under the tree
until he was close at hand. Then the ab-
rupt discovery of this stranger seems to
have checked whatever he was prepared to
say for his dtbut, and Adeline took the
centre of the stage. Mrs. Bunting was
standing up, and all the croquet players —
except Mabel, who was winning — con-
verged on Chatteris with cries of welcome.
Mabel remained in the midst of what I
understand is called a tea-party, loudly de-
manding that they should see her " play it
out." No doubt if everything had gone
125

THE SEA LADY

well she would have given a most edify-
ing exhibition of what croquet can some-
times be.

Adeline swam forward to Mrs. Bunt-
ing and cried with a note of triumph in
her voice : " It is all settled. Everything
is settled. He has won them all and he
is to contest Hythe."

Quite involuntarily her eyes must have
met the Sea Lady's.

It is of course quite impossible to say
what she found there — or indeed what
there was to find there then. For a mo-
ment they faced riddles, and then the Sea
Lady turned her eyes with a long deferred
scrutiny to the man's face, which he prob-
ably saw now closely for the first time.
One wonders whether it is just possible
that there may have been something, if it
were no more than a gleam of surprise
and enquiry, in that meeting of their eyes.
Just for a moment she held his regard,
126

ME. HAEEY CHATTEEIS EETUENS

and then it shifted enquiringly to Mrs.
Bunting.

That lady intervened effusively with an
" Oh ! I forgot," and introduced them. I
think they went through that without an-
other meeting of the foils of their regard.

" You back ? " said Fred to Chatteris,
touching his arm, and Chatteris confirmed
this happy guess.

The Bunting girls seemed to welcome
Adeline's enviable situation rather than
Chatteris as an individual. And Ma-
bel's voice could be heard approaching.
" Oughtn't they to see me play it out, Mr.
Chatteris?"

"Hullo, Harry, my boy!" cried Mr.
Bunting, who was cultivating a bluff man-
ner. " How's Paris?"

" How's the fishing?" said Harry.

And so they came into a vague circle
about this lively person who had "won
them all " — except Parker, of course, who
127

THE SEA LADY

remained in her own proper place and was,
I am certain, never to be won by anybody.

There was a handing and shifting of
garden chairs.

No one seemed to take the slightest
notice of Adeline's dramatic announce-
ment. The Buntings were not good at
thinking of things to say. She stood in
the midst of the group like a leading lady
when the other actors have forgotten their
parts. Then every one woke up to this, as
it were, and they went off in a volley. " So
it's really all settled," said Mrs. Bunting ;
and Betty Bunting said, " There is to be
an election then ! " and Nettie said, "What
fun ! " Mr. Bunting remarked with a
knowing air, " So you saw him then ? " and
Fred flung " Hooray ! " into the tangle of
sounds.

The Sea Lady of course said nothing.

" We'll give 'em a jolly good fight for
it, anyhow," said Mr. Bunting.
128

ME. HAEEY CHATTEEIS EETUENS

"Well, I hope we shall do that," said
Chatteris.

"We shall do more than that," said
Adeline.

"Oh, yes!" said Betty Bunting, "we
shall."

" I knew they would let him," said
Adeline.

" If they had any sense," said Mr.
Bunting.

Then came a pause, and Mr. Bunting
was emboldened to lift up his voice and
utter politics. " They are getting sense,"
he said. " They are learning that a party
must have men, men of birth and train-
ing. Money and the mob — they've tried
to keep things going by playing to fads
and class jealousies. And the Irish. And
they've had their lesson. How? Why,
— we've stood aside. We've left 'em to
faddists and fomenters — and the Irish.
And here they are ! It's a revolution in
129

THE SEA LADY

the party. We've let it down. Now we
must pick it up again."

He made a gesture with his fat little
hand, one of those fat pink little hands
that appear to have neither flesh nor bones
inside them but only sawdust or horse-
hair. Mrs. Bunting leaned back in her
chair and smiled at him indulgently.

11 It is no common election," said Mr.
Bunting. " It is a great issue."

The Sea Lady had been regarding him
thoughtfully. " What is a great issue ? "
she asked. " I don't quite understand."

Mr. Bunting spread himself to explain
to her. "This," he said to begin with.
Adeline listened with a mingling of inter-
est and impatience, attempting ever and
again to suppress him and to involve Chat-
teris by a tactful interposition. But Chat-
teris appeared disinclined to be involved.
He seemed indeed quite interested in Mr.
Bunting's view of the case.
130

MR. HARRY CHATTERIS RETURNS

Presently the croquet quartette went
back — at Mabel's suggestion — to their
game, and the others continued their
political talk. It became more personal
at last, dealing soon quite specifically with
all that Chatteris was doing and more
particularly all that Chatteris was to do.
Mrs. Bunting suddenly suppressed Mr.
Bunting as he was offering advice, and
Adeline took the burden of the talk again.
She indicated vast purposes. " This elec-
tion is merely the opening of a door," she
said. When Chatteris made modest dis-
avowals she smiled with a proud and
happy consciousness of what she meant
to make of him.

A4nd Mrs. Bunting supplied footnotes
to make ir all clear to the Sea Lady.
" He's so modest," she said at one point,
and Chatteris pretended not to hear and
went rather pink. Ever and again he
attempted to deflect the talk towards the

131

THE SEA LADY

Sea Lady and away from himself, but he
was hampered by his ignorance of her
position.

And the Sea Lady said scarcely any-
thing but watched Chatteris and Adeline,
and more particularly Chatteris in relation
to Adeline.

132

CHAPTER THE SIXTH
SYMPTOMATIC

I

MY cousin Melville is never very clear
about his dates. Now this is greatly to
be regretted, because it would be very
illuminating indeed if one could tell just
how many days elapsed before he came
upon Chatteris in intimate conversation
with the Sea Lady. He was going along
the front of the Leas with some books
from the Public Library that Miss Glen-
dower had suddenly wished to consult,
and which she, with that entire igno-
rance of his lack of admiration for her
which was part of her want of charm for
him, had bidden him bring her. It was
in one of those sheltered paths just under
133

THE SEA LADY

the brow which give such a pleasant and
characteristic charm to Folkestone, that
he came upon a little group about the
Sea Lady's bath chair. Chatteris was
seated in one of the wooden seats that are
embedded in the bank, and was leaning
forward and looking into the Sea Lady's
face ; and she was speaking with a smile
that struck Melville even at the time as
being a little special in its quality — and
she seems to have been capable of many
charming smiles. Parker was a little dis-
tance away, where a sort of bastion pro-
jects and gives a wide view of the pier
and harbour and the coast of France, re-
garding it all with a qualified disfavour,
and the bath chairman was crumpled up
against the bank lost in that wistful mel-
ancholy that the constant perambula-
tion of broken humanity necessarily en-
genders.

My cousin slackened his pace a little
134

A little group about the Sea Lady's bath chair.

SYMPTOMATIC

and came up and joined them. The con-
versation hung at his approach. Chatteris
sat back a little, but there seemed no re-
sentment and he sought a topic for the
three to discuss in the books Melville car-
ried.

"Books?" he said.

" For Miss Glendower," said Melville.

"Oh!" said Chatteris.

"What are they about?" asked the
Sea Lady.

" Land tenure," said Melville.

"That's hardly my subject," said the
Sea Lady, and Chatteris joined in her
smile as if he saw a jest.

There was a little pause.

" You are contesting Hythe ? " said
Melville.

" Fate points that way," said Chatteris.

"They threaten a dissolution for Sep-
tember."

" It will come in a month," said Chat-

THE SEA LADY

teris, with the inimitable tone of one who
knows.

"In that case we shall soon be busy."

"And / may canvass," said the Sea
Lady. " I never have "

"Miss Waters," explained Chatteris,
" has been telling me she means to help
us." He met Melville's eye frankly.

" It's rough work, Miss Waters," said
Melville.

" I don't mind that. It's fun. And I
want to help. I really do want to help —
Mr. Chatteris."

" You know, that's encouraging."

" I could go around with you in my
bath chair ? "

" It would be a picnic," said Chat-
teris.

" I mean to help anyhow," said the Sea
Lady.

"You know the case for the plaintiff?"
asked Melville.

136

SYMPTOMATIC

She looked at him.

" You've got your arguments?"

" I shall ask them to vote for Mr.
Chatteris, and afterwards when I see
them I shall remember them and smile
and wave my hand. What else is
there ? "

" Nothing," said Chatteris, and shut the
lid on Melville. " I wish I had an argu-
ment as good."

" What sort of people are they here ? "
asked Melville. " Isn't there a smuggling
interest to conciliate ? "

" I haven't asked that," said Chatteris.
" Smuggling is over and past, you know.
Forty years ago. It always has been forty
years ago. They trotted out the last of
the smugglers, — interesting old man, full of
reminiscences, — when there was a count of
the Saxon Shore. He remembered smug-
gling— forty years ago. Really, I doubt
if there ever was any smuggling. The
137

THE SEA LADY

existing coast guard is a sacrifice to a vain
superstition."

" Why ! " cried the Sea Lady. " Only
about five weeks ago I saw quite near
here "

She stopped abruptly and caught Mel-
ville's eye. He grasped her difficulty.

"In a paper?" he suggested.

" Yes, in a paper," she said, seizing the
rope he threw her.

"Well?" asked Chatteris.

"There is smuggling still," said the
Sea Lady, with an air of some one who
decides not to tell an anecdote that is sud-
denly found to be half forgotten.

"There's no doubt it happens," said
Chatteris, missing it all. " But it doesn't
appear in the electioneering. I certainly
sha'n't agitate for a faster revenue cutter.
However things may be in that respect, I
take the line that they are very well as
they are. That's my line, of course."
138

SYMPTOMATIC

And he looked out to sea. The eyes of
Melville and the Sea Lady had an inti-
mate moment.

" There, you know, is just a specimen
of the sort of thing we do," said Chatteris.
" Are you prepared to be as intricate as
that?"

" Quite," said the Sea Lady.

My cousin was reminded of an anec-
dote.

The talk degenerated into anecdotes
of canvassing, and ran shallow. My cousin
was just gathering that Mrs. Bunting and
Miss Bunting had been with the Sea Lady
and had gone into the town to a shop,
when they returned. Chatteris rose to
greet them and explained — what had been
by no means apparent before — that he
was on his way to Adeline, and after a few
further trivialities he and Melville went
on together.

A brief silence fell between them.
139

THE SEA LADY

"Who is that Miss Waters?" asked
Chatteris.

" Friend of Mrs. Bunting," prevari-
cated Melville.

" So I gather. . . . She seems a very
charming person."

" She is."

" She's interesting. Her illness seems
to throw her up. It makes a passive thing
of her, like a picture or something that's
— imaginary. Imagined — anyhow. She
sits there and smiles and responds. Her
eyes — have something intimate. And
yet "

My cousin offered no assistance.

" Where did Mrs. Bunting find her."

My cousin had to gather himself to-
gether for a second or so.

"There's something," he said delib-
erately, "that Mrs. Bunting doesn't seem
disposed "

"What can it be?"
140

SYMPTOMATIC

" It's bound to be all right," said Mel-
ville rather weakly.

" It's strange, too. Mrs. Bunting is
usually so disposed "

Melville left that to itself.

" That's what one feels," said Chatteris.

"What?"

" Mystery."

My cousin shares with me a profound
detestation of that high mystic method of
treating women. He likes women to be
finite — and nice. In fact, he likes every-
thing to be finite — and nice. So he
merely grunted.

But Chatteris was not to be stopped
by that. He passed to a critical note.
" No doubt it's all illusion. All women
are impressionists, a patch, a light. You
get an effect. And that is all you are
meant to get, I suppose. She gets an
effect. But how — that's the mystery. It's
not merely beauty. There's plenty of
141

THE SEA LADY

beauty in the world. But not of these
effects. The eyes, I fancy."

He dwelt on that for a moment.

" There's really nothing in eyes, you
know, Chatteris," said my cousin Melville,
borrowing an alien argument and a tone
of analytical cynicism from me. " Have
you ever looked at eyes through a hole in
a sheet ? "

" Oh, I don't know," said Chatteris.
" I don't mean the mere physical eye. . . .
Perhaps it's the look of health — and the
bath chair. A bold discord. You don't
know what's the matter, Melville ?"

"How?"

" I gather from Bunting it's a disable-
ment— not a deformity."

" He ought to know."

" I'm not so sure of that. You don't
happen to know the nature of her disable-
ment?"

" I can't tell at all," said Melville in a
142

SYMPTOMATIC

speculative tone. It struck him he was
getting to prevaricate better.

The subject seemed exhausted. They
spoke of a common friend whom the
sight of the M£tropole suggested. Then
they did not talk at all for a time, until
the stir and interest of the band stand
was passed. Then Chatteris threw out a
thought.

" Complex business — feminine mo-
tives," he remarked.

"How?"

" This canvassing. She can't be inter-
ested in philanthropic Liberalism."

" There's a difference in the type. And
besides, it's a personal matter."

" Not necessarily, is it ? Surely there's
not such an intellectual gap between the
sexes ! If you can get interested "

" Oh, I know."

" Besides, it's not a question of princi-
ples. It's the fun of electioneering."
143

THE SEA LADY

"Fun!"

"There's no knowing what won't in-
terest the feminine mind," said Melville,
and added, "or what will."

Chatteris did not answer.

"It's the district visiting instinct, I
suppose," said Melville. " They all have
it. It's the canvassing. All women like
to go into houses that don't belong to
them."

"Very likely," said Chatteris shortly,
and failing a reply from Melville, he gave
way to secret meditations, it would seem
still of a fairly agreeable sort.

The twelve o'clock gun thudded from
ShorneclifTe Camp.

" By Jove ! " said Chatteris, and quick-
ened his steps.

They found Adeline busy amidst her
papers. As they entered she pointed re-
proachfully, yet with the protrusion of a
144

SYMPTOMATIC

certain Marcella-like undertone of sweet-
ness, at the clock. The apologies of Chat-
teris were effusive and winning, and in-
volved no mention of the Sea Lady on
the Leas.

Melville delivered his books and left
them already wading deeply into the de-
tails of the district organisation that the
local Liberal organiser had submitted.

II

A little while after the return of Chat-
teris, my cousin Melville and the Sea Lady
were under the ilex at the end of the sea
garden and — disregarding Parker (as every
one was accustomed to do), who was in
a garden chair doing some afternoon work
at a proper distance — there was nobody
with them at all. Fred and the girls
were out cycling — Fred had gone with
them at the Sea Lady's request — and
145

THE SEA LADY

Miss Glendower and Mrs. Bunting were
at Hythe calling diplomatically on some
rather horrid local people who might
be serviceable to Harry in his elec-
tioneering.

Mr. Bunting was out fishing. He was
not fond of fishing, but he was in many
respects an exceptionally resolute little
man, and he had taken to fishing every
day in the afternoon after luncheon in
order to break himself of what Mrs. Bunt-
ing called his "ridiculous habit" of getting
sea-sick whenever he went out in a boat.
He said that if fishing from a boat with
pieces of mussels for bait after luncheon
would not break the habit nothing would,
and certainly it seemed at times as if it
were going to break everything that was
in him. But the habit escaped. This,
however, is a digression.

These two, I say, were sitting in the
ample shade under the evergreen oak, and
146

SYMPTOMATIC

Melville, I imagine, was in those fine
faintly patterned flannels that in the year
1899 combined correctness with ease. He
was no doubt looking at the shaded face
of the Sea Lady, framed in a frame of
sunlit yellow-green lawn and black-green
ilex leaves — at least so my impulse for
verisimilitude conceives it — and she at
first was pensive and downcast that after-
noon and afterwards she was interested
and looked into his eyes. Either she must
have suggested then he might smoke or
else he asked. Anyhow, his cigarettes
were produced. She looked at them with
an arrested gesture, and he hung for a
moment, doubtful, on her gesture.

" I suppose you — " he said.

" I never learned."

He glanced at Parker and then met
the Sea Lady's regard.

" It's one of the things I came for,"
she said.

147

THE SEA LADY

He took the only course.

She accepted a cigarette and examined
it thoughtfully. " Down there," she said,
" it's just one of the things — You will
understand we get nothing but saturated
tobacco. Some of the mermen — There's
something they have picked up from the
sailors. Quids, I think they call it. But
that's too horrid for words ! "

She dismissed the unpleasant topic by
a movement, and lapsed into thought.

My cousin clicked his match-box.

She had a momentary doubt and
glanced towards the house. " Mrs. Bunt-
ing ? " she asked. Several times, I under-
stand, she asked the same thing.

" She wouldn't mind — " said Melville,
and stopped.

" She won't think it improper," he
amplified, "if nobody else thinks it im-
proper."

"There's nobody else," said the Sea
148

SYMPTOMATIC

Lady, glancing at Parker, and my cousin
lit the match.

My cousin has an indirect habit of
mind. With all general and all personal
things his desperation to get at them
obliquely amounts almost to a passion ; he
could no more go straight to a crisis than
a cat could to a stranger. He came of! at
a tangent now as he was sitting forward
and scrutinising her first very creditable
efforts to draw. " I just wonder," he
said, " exactly what it was you did come
for."

She smiled at him over a little jet of
smoke. " Why, this," she said.

" And hairdressing ? "

"And dressing."

She smiled again after a momentary
hesitation. " And all this sort of thing,"
she said, as if she felt she had an-
swered him perhaps a little below his
deserts. Her gesture indicated the house
149

THE SEA LADY

and the lawn and — my cousin Melville
wondered just exactly how much else.

" Am I doing it right?" asked the Sea
Lady.

" Beautifully," said my cousin with a
faint sigh in his voice. "What do you
think of it?"

" It was worth coming for," said the
Sea Lady, smiling into his eyes.

" But did you really just come ? "

She filled in his gap. "To see what
life was like on land here ? . . . Isn't that
enough ? "

Melville's cigarette had failed to light.
He regarded its blighted career pensively.

" Life," he said, "isn't all— this sort of
thing."

" This sort of thing ? "

" Sunlight. Cigarette smoking. Talk.
Looking nice."

" But it's made up "

" Not altogether."
150

SYMPTOMATIC

"For example?"

" Oh, you know."

"What?"

" You know," said Melville, and would
not look at her.

" I decline to know," she said after a
little pause.

" Besides—" he said.

"Yes?"

"You told Mrs. Bunting—" It oc-
curred to him that he was telling tales,
but that scruple came too late.
' "Well?"

" Something about a soul."

She made no immediate answer. He
looked up and her eyes were smiling.
"Mr. Melville," she said, innocently,
" what is a soul ? "

"Well," said my cousin readily, and
then paused for a space. " A soul," said
he, and knocked an imaginary ash from his
extinct cigarette.

THE SEA LADY

" A soul," he repeated, and glanced at
Parker.

" A soul, you know," he said again, and
looked at the Sea Lady with the air of a
man who is handling a difficult matter with
skilful care.

" Come to think of it," he said, " it's
a rather complicated matter to ex-
plain ••

" To a being without one ?"
"To any one," said my cousin Mel-
ville, suddenly admitting his difficulty.

He meditated upon her eyes for a
moment.

" Besides," he said, "you know what a
soul is perfectly well."

" No," she answered, " I don't."

" You know as well as I do."

" Ah ! that may be different."

" You came to get a soul."

" Perhaps I don't want one. Why —

if one hasn't one ? "

152

SYMPTOMATIC

" Ah, there / " And my cousin shrugged
his shoulders. " But really you know —
It's just the generality of it that makes it
hard to define."

" Everybody has a soul ? "

" Every one."

"Except me?"

" I'm not certain of that."

"Mrs. Bunting?"

" Certainly."

"And Mr. Bunting?"

" Every one."

" Has Miss Glendower ?"

" Lots."

The Sea Lady mused. She went off
at a tangent abruptly.

"Mr. Melville," she said, "what is a
union of souls ? "

Melville flicked his extinct cigarette

suddenly into an elbow shape and then

threw it away. The phrase may have

awakened some reminiscence. " It's an

11 153

THE SEA LADY

extra," he said. " It's a sort of flour-
ish. . . . And sometimes it's like leaving
cards by footmen — a substitute for the
real presence."

There came a gap. He remained
downcast, trying to find a way towards
whatever it was that was in his mind
to say. Conceivably, he did not clearly
know what that might be until he came
to it. The Sea Lady abandoned an at-
tempt to understand him in favour of a
more urgent topic.

" Do you think Miss Glendower and
Mr. Chatteris ?"

Melville looked up at her. He noticed
she had hung on the latter name. " De-
cidedly," he said. "It's just what they
would do."

Then he spoke again. "Chatteris?"
he said.

" Yes," said she.

" I thought so," said Melville.
154

SYMPTOMATIC

The Sea Lady regarded him gravely.
They scrutinised each other with an un-
precedented intimacy. Melville was sud-
denly direct. It was a discovery that it
seemed he ought to have made all along.
He felt quite unaccountably bitter ; he
spoke with a twitch of the mouth and his
voice had a note of accusation. "You
want to talk about him."

She nodded — still grave.

"Well, / don't." He changed his
note. " But I will if you wish it."

" I thought you would."

" Oh, you know," said Melville, dis-
covering his extinct cigarette was within
reach of a vindictive heel.

She said nothing.

"Well?" said Melville.

" I saw him first," she apologised,
" some years ago."

"Where?"

" In the South Seas— near Tonga."

THE SEA LADY

"And that is really what you came
for?"

This time her manner was convincing.
She admitted, " Yes."

Melville was carefully impartial. "He's
sightly," he admitted, " and well-built and
a decent chap — a decent chap. But I
don't see why you "

He went off at a tangent. " He didn't
see you ? "

" Oh, no."

Melville's pose and tone suggested a
mind of extreme liberality. " I don't see
why you came," he said. " Nor what you
mean to do. You see" — with an air of
noting a trifling but valid obstacle —
" there's Miss Glendower."

"Is there?" she said.

"Well, isn't there?"

" That's just it," she said.

" And besides after all, you know, why

should you ? "

156

SYMPTOMATIC

" I admit it's unreasonable," she said.
" But why reason about it ? It's a matter
of the imagination "

" For him?"

" How should I know how it takes
him ? That is what I want to know."

Melville looked her in the eyes again.
" You know, you're not playing fair," he
said.

"To her?"

" To any one."

"Why?"

" Because you are immortal — and un-
incumbered. Because you can do every-
thing you want to do — and we cannot. I
don't know why we cannot, but we cannot.
Here we are, with our short lives and our
little souls to save, or lose, fussing for our
little concerns. And you, out of the ele-
ments, come and beckon "

" The elements have their rights," she
said. And then : "The elements are the

THE SEA LADY

elements, you know. That is what you
forget."

" Imagination ?"

" Certainly. That's the element. Those
elements of your chemists "

"Yes?"

"Are all imagination. There isn't any
other." She went on : "And all the ele-
ments of your life, the life you imagine
you are living, the little things you must
do, the little cares, the extraordinary little
duties, the day by day, the hypnotic limi-
tations— all these things are a fancy that
has taken hold of you too strongly for you
to shake off. You daren't, you mustn't,
you can't. To us who watch you "

"You watch us?"

" Oh, yes. We watch you, and some-
times we envy you. Not only for the
dry air and the sunlight, and the shadows
of trees, and the feeling of morning, and
the pleasantness of many such things, but
158

SYMPTOMATIC

because your lives begin and end — because
you look towards an end."

She reverted to her former topic.
" But you are so limited, so tied ! The
little time you have, you use so poorly.
You begin and you end, and all the time
between it is as if you were enchanted ;
you are afraid to do this that would be
delightful to do, you must do that, though
you know all the time it is stupid and dis-
agreeable. Just think of the things — even
the little things — you mustn't do. Up
there on the Leas in this hot weather all
the people are sitting in stuffy ugly clothes
— ever so much too much clothes, hot
tight boots, you know, when they have the
most lovely pink feet, some of them — we
see, — and they are all with little to talk
about and nothing to look at, and bound
not to do all sorts of natural things and
bound to do all sorts of preposterous
things. Why are they bound ? Why are
159

THE SEA LADY

they letting life slip by them ? Just as
if they wouldn't all of them presently
be dead ! Suppose you were to go up
there in a bathing dress and a white cotton
hat "

" It wouldn't be proper ! " cried Mel-
ville.

"Why not?"

" It would be outrageous ! "

" But any one may see you like that on
the beach ! "

" That's different"

" It isn't different. You dream it's
different. And in just the same way you
dream all the other things are proper or
improper or good or bad to do. Be-
cause you are in a dream, a fantastic,
unwholesome little dream. So small, so
infinitely small ! I saw you the other
day dreadfully worried by a spot of ink
on your sleeve — almost the whole after-

noon."

1 60

Why not?"

SYMPTOMATIC

My cousin looked distressed. She
abandoned the ink-spot.

" Your life, I tell you, is a dream — a
dream, and you can't wake out of it "

" And if so, why do you tell me ?"

She made no answer for a space.

" Why do you tell me ?" he insisted.

He heard the rustle of her movement
as she bent towards him.

She came warmly close to him. She
spoke in gently confidential undertone, as
one who imparts a secret that is not to be
too lightly given. " Because," she said,
"there are better dreams."

Ill

For a moment it seemed to Melville
that he had been addressed by something
quite other than the pleasant lady in the
bath chair before him. " But how — ? "
he began and stopped. He remained si-
161

THE SEA LADY

lent with a perplexed face. She leaned
back and glanced away from him, and
when at last she turned and spoke again,
specific realities closed in on him once
more.

" Why shouldn't I," she asked, "if I
want to ? "

"Shouldn't what?"

" If I fancy Chatteris."

"One might think of obstacles," he
reflected.

" He's not hers," she said.

" In a way, he's trying to be," said
Melville.

" Trying to be ! He has to be what
he is. Nothing can make him hers. If
you weren't dreaming you would see
that." My cousin was silent. " She's
not real" she went on. " She's a
mass of fancies and vanities. She gets
everything out of books. She gets her-
self out of a book. You can see her
162

SYMPTOMATIC

doing it here. . . . What is she seeking ?
What is she trying to do ? All this work,
all this political stuff of hers ? She talks
of the condition of the poor ! What is
the condition of the poor? A dreary
tossing on the bed of existence, a per-
petual fear of consequences that perpetu-
ally distresses them. Lives of anxiety
they lead, because they do not know what
a dream the whole thing is. Suppose
they were not anxious and afraid. . . .
And what does she care for the condition
of the poor, after all ? It is only a point
of departure in her dream. In her heart
she does not want their dreams to be
happier, in her heart she has no passion
for them, only her dream is that she
should be prominently doing good, as-
serting herself, controlling their affairs
amidst thanks and praise and blessings.
Her dream ! Of serious things ! — a rout
of phantoms pursuing a phantom ignis
163

THE SEA LADY

fatuus — the afterglow of a mirage. Van-
ity of vanities "

" It's real enough to her."

" As real as she can make it, you
know. But she isn't real herself. She
begins badly."

" And he, you know "

" He doesn't believe in it."

" I'm not so sure."

" I am — now."

" He's a complicated being."

" He will ravel out," said the Sea Lady.

" I think you misjudge him about that
work of his, anyhow," said Melville.
" He's a man rather divided against him-
self." He added abruptly, " We all are."
He recovered himself from the generality.
" It's vague, I admit, a sort of vague wish
to do something decent, you know, that
he has "

" A sort of vague wish," she conceded ;

" but "

164

SYMPTOMATIC

" He means well," said Melville, cling-
ing to his proposition.

" He means nothing. Only very dimly
he suspects "

"Yes?"

" What you too are beginning to sus-
pect. . . . That other things may be con-
ceivable even if they are not possible.
That this life of yours is not everything.
That it is not to be taken too seriously.
Because . . . there are better dreams ! "

The song of the sirens was in her
voice ; my cousin would not look at her
face. " I know nothing of any other
dreams," he said. " One has oneself and
this life, and that is enough to manage.
What other dreams can there be ? Any-
how, we are in the dream — we have to
accept it. Besides, you know, that's go-
ing off the question. We were talking
of Chatteris, and why you have come
for him. Why should you come, why
165

THE SEA LADY

should any one outside come — into this
world ? "

" Because we are permitted to come —
we immortals. And why, if we choose to
do so, and taste this life that passes and
continues, as rain that falls to the ground,
why should we not do it ? Why should
we abstain ? "

"And Chatteris?"

" If he pleases me."

He roused himself to a Titanic effort
against an oppression that was coming
over him. He tried to get the thing
down to a definite small case, an incident,
an affair of considerations. " But look
here, you know," he said. " What pre-
cisely do you mean to do if you get him ?
You don't seriously intend to keep up the
game to that extent. You don't mean
— positively, in our terrestrial fashion, you
know — to marry him ? "

The Sea Lady laughed at his recovery
166

SYMPTOMATIC

of the practical tone. "Well, why not?"
she asked.

" And go about in a bath chair, and —
No, that's not it. What is it ? "

He looked up into her eyes, and it
was like looking into deep water. Down
in that deep there stirred impalpable
things. She smiled at him.

" No ! " she said, " I sha'n't marry him
and go about in a bath chair. And grow
old as all earthly women must. (It's the
dust, I think, and the dryness of the air,
and the way you begin and end.) You
burn too fast, you flare and sink and die.
This life of yours ! — the illnesses and the
growing old ! When the skin wears
shabby, and the light is out of the hair,
and the teeth — Not even for love would
I face it. No. . . . But then you know — "
Her voice sank to a low whisper. "There
are better dreams."

"What dreams?" rebelled Melville.
167

THE SEA LADY

" What do you mean ? What are you ?
What do you mean by coming into this
life — you who pretend to be a woman —
and whispering, whispering ... to us who
are in it, to us who have no escape."

" But there is an escape," said the Sea
Lady.

"How?"

" For some there is an escape. When
the whole life rushes to a moment — "
And then she stopped. Now there is
clearly no sense in this sentence to my
mind, even from a lady of an essentially
imaginary sort, who comes out of the sea.
How can a whole life rush to a moment ?
But whatever it was she really did say,
there is no doubt she left it half unsaid.

He glanced up at her abrupt pause,
and she was looking at the house.

"Do . . . ris! Do ... ris ! Are
you there ? " It was Mrs. Bunting's voice
168

SYMPTOMATIC

floating athwart the lawn, the voice of
the ascendant present, of invincibly sensi-
ble things. The world grew real again to
Melville. He seemed to wake up, to start
back from some delusive trance that crept
upon him.

He looked at the Sea Lady as if he
were already incredulous of the things
they had said, as if he had been asleep and
dreamed the talk. Some light seemed to
go out, some fancy faded. His eye rested
upon the inscription, " Flamps, Bath Chair
Proprietor," just visible under her arm.

" We've got perhaps a little more se-
rious than — " he said doubtfully, and then,
" What you have been saying — did you
exactly mean ? "

The rustle of Mrs. Bunting's advance
became audible, and Parker moved and
coughed.

He was quite sure they had been

" more serious than "

12 169

THE SEA LADY

" Another time perhaps "

Had all these things really been said, or
was he under some fantastic hallucination ?

He had a sudden thought. " Where's
your cigarette ? " he asked.

But her cigarette had ended long ago.

"And what have you been talking
about so long?" sang Mrs. Bunting, with
an almost motherly hand on the back of
Melville's chair.

" Oh ! " said Melville, at a loss for once,
and suddenly rising from his chair to face
her, and then to the Sea Lady with an
artificially easy smile, "What have we
been talking about ? "

" All sorts of things, I dare say," said
Mrs. Bunting, in what might almost be
called an arch manner. And she honoured
Melville with a special smile — one of those
smiles that are morally almost winks.

My cousin caught all the archness full
in the face, and for four seconds he stared
170

The waiter retires amazed.

SYMPTOMATIC

at Mrs. Bunting in amazement. He
wanted breath. Then they all laughed
together, and Mrs. Bunting sat down
pleasantly and remarked, quite audibly to
herself, " As if I couldn't guess."

IV

I gather that after this talk Melville
fell into an extraordinary net of doubting.
In the first place, and what was most dis-
tressing, he doubted whether this conversa-
tion could possibly have happened at all,
and if it had whether his memory had not
played him some trick in modifying and
intensifying the import of it all. My
cousin occasionally dreams conversations
of so sober and probable a sort as to
mingle quite perplexingly with his real
experiences. Was this one of these occa-
sions ? He found himself taking up and
scrutinising, as it were, first this remem-
171

THE SEA LADY

bered sentence and then that. Had she
really said this thing and quite in this
way ? His memory of their conversation
was never quite the same for two days to-
gether. Had she really and deliberately
foreshadowed for Chatteris some obscure
and mystical submergence ?

What intensified and complicated his
doubts most, was the Sea Lady's subse-
quent serene freedom from allusion to
anything that might or might not have
passed. She behaved just as she had al-
ways behaved ; neither an added intimacy
nor that distance that follows indiscreet
confidences appeared in her manner.

And amidst this crop of questions
arose presently quite a new set of doubts,
as if he were not already sufficiently
equipped. The Sea Lady alleged she had
come to the world that lives on land, for
Chatteris.

And then ?

172

SYMPTOMATIC

He had not hitherto looked ahead to
see precisely what would happen to Chat-
teris, to Miss Glendower, to the Buntings
or any one when, as seemed highly proba-
ble, Chatteris was "got." There were
other dreams, there was another existence,
an elsewhere — and Chatteris was to go
there ! So she said ! But it came into
Melville's mind with a quite dispropor-
tionate force and vividness that once, long
ago, he had seen a picture of a man and a
mermaid, rushing downward through deep
water. . . . Could it possibly be that sort
of thing in the year eighteen hundred
and ninety-nine ? Conceivably, if she had
said these things, did she mean them, and
if she meant them, and this definite cam-
paign of capture was in hand, what was
an orderly, sane-living, well-dressed bache-
lor of the world to do ?

Look on — until things ended in a
catastrophe ?

173

THE SEA LADY

One figures his face almost aged. He
appears to have hovered about the house
on the Sandgate Riviera to a scandalous
extent, failing always to get a sufficiently
long and intimate tete-a-tete with the Sea
Lady to settle once for all his doubts as to
what really had been said and what he had
dreamed or fancied in their talk. Never
had he been so exceedingly disturbed as
he was by the twist this talk had taken.
Never had his habitual pose of humorous
acquiescence in life been quite so difficult
to keep up. He became positively absent-
minded. " You know if it's like that, it's
serious," was the burden of his private
mutterings. His condition was palpable
even to Mrs. Bunting. But she misun-
derstood his nature. She said something.
Finally, and quite abruptly, he set off to
London in a state of frantic determination
to get out of it all. The Sea Lady wished
him good-bye in Mrs. Bunting's presence
174

SYMPTOMATIC

as if there had never been anything un-
usual between them.

I suppose one may contrive to under-
stand something of his disturbance. He
had made quite considerable sacrifices to
the world. He had, at great pains, found
his place and his way in it, he had imag-
ined he had really " got the hang of it," as
people say, and was having an interesting
time. And then, you know, to encounter
a voice, that subsequently insists upon
haunting you with " There are better
dreams " ; to hear a tale that threatens
complications, disasters, broken hearts, and
not to have the faintest idea of the proper
thing to do.

But I do not think he would have
bolted from Sandgate until he had really
got some more definite answer to the ques-
tion, " What better dreams ?" until he had
surprised or forced some clearer illumi-
nation from the passive invalid, if Mrs.
175

THE SEA LADY

Bunting one morning had not very tact-
fully dropped a hint.

You know Mrs. Bunting, and you can
imagine what she tactfully hinted. Just
at that time, what with her own girls and
the Glendower girls, her imagination was
positively inflamed for matrimony ; she
was a matrimonial fanatic; she would have
married anybody to anything just for the
fun of doing it, and the idea of pairing
off poor Melville to this mysterious im-
mortal with a scaly tail seems to have
appeared to her the most natural thing
in the world.

Apropos of nothing whatever I fancy
she remarked, " Your opportunity is now,
Mr. Melville."

" My opportunity ! " cried Melville, try-
ing madly not to understand in the face of
her pink resolution.

" You've a monopoly now," she cried.
" But when we go back to London with
176

SYMPTOMATIC

her there will be ever so many people run-
ning after her."

I fancy Melville said something about
carrying the thing too far. He doesn't
remember what he did say. I don't think
he even knew at the time.

However, he fled back to London in
August, and was there so miserably at loose
ends that he had not the will to get out of
the place. On this passage in the story he
does not dwell, and such verisimilitude as
may be, must be supplied by my imagina-
tion. I imagine him in his charmingly
appointed flat, — a flat that is light without
being trivial, and artistic with no want of
dignity or sincerity, — finding a loss of in-
terest in his books, a loss of beauty in the
silver he (not too vehemently) collects. I
imagine him wandering into that dainty lit-
tle bed-room of his and around into the
dressing-room, and there, rapt in a blank
contemplation of the seven-and-twenty
177

THE SEA LADY

pairs of trousers (all creasing neatly in their
proper stretchers) that are necessary to his
conception of a wise and happy man. For
every occasion he has learnt, in a natural
easy progress to knowledge, the exquis-
itely appropriate pair of trousers, the per-
missible upper garment, the becoming
gesture and word. He was a man who
had mastered his world. And then, you
know, the whisper : —

" There are better dreams"

" What dreams ? " I imagine him ask-
ing, with a defensive note. Whatever
transparence the world might have had,
whatever suggestion of something beyond
there, in the sea garden at Sandgate, I
fancy that in Melville's apartments in
London it was indisputably opaque.

And " Damn it ! " he cried, " if these
dreams are for Chatteris, why should she
tell me? Suppose I had the chance of

them — Whatever they are "

178

SYMPTOMATIC

He reflected, with a terrible sincerity
in the nature of his will.

" No ! " And then again, " No !

"And if one mustn't have 'em, why
should one know about 'em and be wor-
ried by them ? If she comes to do mis-
chief, why shouldn't she do mischief with-
out making me an accomplice ? "

He walks up and down and stops at
last and stares out of his window on the
jaded summer traffic going Haymarket
way.

He sees nothing of that traffic. He
sees the little sea garden at Sandgate and
that little group of people very small and
bright and something — something hanging
over them. " It isn't fair on them — or me
— or anybody ! "

Then you know, quite suddenly, I im-
agine him swearing.

I imagine him at his luncheon, a meal
he usually treats with a becoming gravity.
179

THE SEA LADY

I imagine the waiter marking the kindly
self-indulgence of his clean-shaven face,
and advancing with that air of intimate
participation the good waiter shows to
such as he esteems. I figure the respect-
ful pause, the respectful enquiry.

" Oh, anything ! " cries Melville, and
the waiter retires amazed.

V

To add to Melville's distress, as petty
discomforts do add to all genuine trouble,
his club-house was undergoing an opera-
tion, and was full of builders and deco-
rators ; they had gouged out its windows
and gagged its hall with scaffolding, and
he and his like were guests of a stranger
club that had several members who blew.
They seemed never to do anything but
blow and sigh and rustle papers and go to
sleep about the place ; they were like
1 80

They seemed never to do anything but blow and sigh and
rustle papers.

SYMPTOMATIC

blight-spots on the handsome plant of
this host-club, and it counted for little
with Melville, in the state he was in, that
all the fidgety breathers were persons of
eminent position. But it was this tempo-
rary dislocation of his world that brought
him unexpectedly into a quasi confidential
talk with Chatteris one afternoon, for
Chatteris was one of the less eminent and
amorphous members of this club that was
sheltering Melville's club.

Melville had taken up Punch — he was
in that mood when a man takes up any-
thing— and was reading, he did not know
exactly what. Presently he sighed, looked
up, and discovered Chatteris entering the
room.

He was surprised to see Chatteris,
startled and just faintly alarmed, and Chat-
teris it was evident was surprised and dis-
concerted to see him. Chatteris stood in
as awkward an attitude as he was capable
181

THE SEA LADY

of, staring unfavourably, and for a mo-
ment or so he gave no sign of recogni-
tion. Then he nodded and came forward
reluctantly. His every movement sug-
gested the will without the wit to escape.
"You here?" he said.

"What are you doing away from
Hythe at this time ?" asked Melville.

" I came here to write a letter," said
Chatteris.

He looked about him rather helplessly.
Then he sat down beside Melville and de-
manded a cigarette. Suddenly he plunged
into intimacy.

" It is doubtful whether I shall con-
test Hythe," he remarked.

" Yes ? "

" Yes."

He lit his cigarette.

" Would you ? " he asked.

" Not a bit of it," said Melville. " But
then it's not my line."
182

SYMPTOMATIC

"Is it mine?"

" Isn't it a little late in the day to drop
it ?" said Melville. " You've been put up
for it now. Every one's at work. Miss
Glendower "

" I know," said Chatteris.

"Well?"

" I don't seem to want to go on."

" My dear man ! "

" It's a bit of overwork perhaps. I'm
off colour. Things have gone flat. That's
why I'm up here."

He did a very absurd thing. He
threw away a quarter-smoked cigarette
and almost immediately demanded an-
other.

" You've been a little immoderate with
your statistics," said Melville.

Chatteris said something that struck
Melville as having somehow been said be-
fore. "Election, progress, good of hu-
manity, public spirit. None of these
183

THE SEA LADY

things interest me really," he said. " At
least, not just now."

Melville waited.

" One gets brought up in an atmos-
phere in which it's always being whis-
pered that one should go for a career.
You learn it at your mother's knee. They
never give you time to find out what you
really want, they keep on shoving you at
that. They form your character. They
rule your mind. They rush you into it."

"They didn't rush me," said Melville.

" They rushed me, anyhow. And here
I am ! "

" You don't want a career ? "

« Well — Look what it is."

" Oh ! if you look at what things
are!"

" First of all, the messing about to get
into the House. These confounded par-
ties mean nothing — absolutely nothing.
They aren't even decent factions. You
184

SYMPTOMATIC

blither to damned committees of damned
tradesmen whose sole idea for this world
is to get overpaid for their self-respect ;
you whisper and hobnob with local solici-
tors and get yourself seen about with
them ; you ass about the charities and in-
stitutions, and lunch and chatter and
chum with every conceivable form of
human conceit and pushfulness and trick-
ery "

He broke off. "It isn't as if they
were up to anything ! They're working
in their way, just as you are working in
your way. It's the same game with all
of them. They chase a phantom gratifi-
cation, they toil and quarrel and envy,
night and day, in the perpetual attempt to
persuade themselves in spite of everything
that they are real and a success "

He stopped and smoked.

Melville was spiteful. " Yes," he ad-
mitted, " but I thought your little move-
is 185

THE SEA LADY

ment was to be something more than
party politics and self-advancement ? "

He left his sentence interrogatively
incomplete.

" The condition of the poor," he said.

"Well?" said Chatteris, regarding him
with a sort of stony admission in his blue
eyes.

Melville dodged the look. " At Sand-
gate," he said, " there was, you know, a
certain atmosphere of belief "

" I know," said Chatteris for the sec-
ond time.

" That's the devil of it ! " said Chat-
teris after a pause.

" If I don't believe in the game I'm
playing, if I'm left high and dry on this
shoal, with the tide of belief gone past
me, it isn't my planning, anyhow. I know
the decent thing I ought to do. I mean
to do it ; in the end I mean to do it ; I'm
talking in this way to relieve my mind.
1 86

SYMPTOMATIC

I've started the game and I must see it
out ; I've put my hand to the plough and
I mustn't go back. That's why I came to
London — to get it over with myself. It
was running up against you, set me off.
You caught me at the crisis."

" Ah ! " said Melville.

" But for all that, the thing is as I
said — none of these things interest me
really. It won't alter the fact that I am
committed to fight a phantom election
about nothing in particular, for a party
that's been dead ten years. And if the
ghosts win, go into the Parliament as a
constituent spectre. . . . There it is — as
a mental phenomenon ! "

He reiterated his cardinal article.
" The interest is dead," he said, " the will
has no soul."

He became more critical. He bent a
little closer to Melville's ear. " It isn't
really that I don't believe. When I say I
187

THE SEA LADY

don't believe in these things I go too far.
I do. I know, the electioneering, the in-
triguing is a means to an end. There is
work to be done, sound work, and impor-
tant work. Only "

Melville turned an eye on him over
his cigarette end.

Chatteris met it, seemed for a moment
to cling to it. He became absurdly con-
fidential. He was evidently in the direst
need of a confidential ear.

"I don't want to do it. When I sit
down to it, square myself down in the
chair, you know, and say, now for the rest
of my life this is IT — this is your life,
Chatteris ; there comes a sort of terror,
Melville."

" H'm," said Melville, and turned away.
Then he turned on Chatteris with the air
of a family physician, and tapped his shoul-
der three times as he spoke. " You've had
too much statistics, Chatteris," he said.
1 88

SYMPTOMATIC

He let that soak in. Then he turned
about towards his interlocutor, and toyed
with a club ash tray. " It's every day
has overtaken you," he said. " You can't
see the wood for the trees. You forget
the spacious design you are engaged upon,
in the heavy details of the moment. You
are like a painter who has been working
hard upon something very small and ex-
acting in a corner. You want to step back
and look at the whole thing."

"No," said Chatteris, "that isn't
quite it."

Melville indicated that he knew better.

" I keep on, stepping back and looking
at it," said Chatteris. "Just lately I've
scarcely done anything else. I'll admit it's
a spacious and noble thing — political work
done well — only — I admire it, but it
doesn't grip my imagination. That's where
the trouble comes in."

"What does grip your imagination?"
189

THE SEA LADY

asked Melville. He was absolutely certain
the Sea Lady had been talking this paraly-
sis into Chatteris, and he wanted to see
just how far she had gone. " For exam-
ple," he tested, "are there — by any
chance — other dreams ? "

Chatteris gave no sign at the phrase.
Melville dismissed his suspicion. " What
do you mean — other dreams ? " asked
Chatteris.

" Is there conceivably another way —
another sort of life — some other as-
pect ?"

" It's out of the question," said Chat-
teris. He added, rather remarkably, " Ade-
line's awfully good."

My cousin Melville acquiesced silently
in Adeline's goodness.

" All this, you know, is a mood. My
life is made for me — and it's a very good
life. It's better than I deserve."

" Heaps," said Melville.
190

SYMPTOMATIC

" Much," said Chatteris defiantly.

" Ever so much," endorsed Melville.

" Let's talk of other things," said Chat-
teris. " It's what even the street boys call
mawbid nowadays to doubt for a moment
the absolute final all-this-and-nothing-else-
in-the-worldishness of whatever you happen
to be doing."

My cousin Melville, however, could
think of no other sufficiently interesting
topic. " You left them all right at Sand-
gate ? " he asked, after a pause.

" Except little Bunting."

"Seedy?"

" Been fishing."

"Of course. Breezes and the spring
tides. . . . And Miss Waters ? "

Chatteris shot a suspicious glance at
him. He affected the offhand style. "She's
quite well," he said. " Looks just as charm-
ing as ever."

" She really means that canvassing ?"
191

THE SEA LADY

" She's spoken of it again."

" She'll do a lot for you," said Melville,
and left a fine wide pause.

Chatteris assumed the tone of a man
who gossips.

"Who is this Miss Waters?" he
asked.

" A very charming person," said Mel-
ville and said no more.

Chatteris waited and his pretence of
airy gossip vanished. He became very
much in earnest.

" Look here," he said. " Who is this
Miss Waters?"

" How should / know ?" prevaricated
Melville.

"Well, you do know. And the others
know. Who is she ? "

Melville met his eyes. " Won't they
tell you ? " he asked.

11 That's just it," said Chatteris.

" Why do you want to know ? "
192

SYMPTOMATIC

" Why shouldn't I know?"

" There's a sort of promise to keep it
dark."

"Keep o/Atf dark?"

My cousin gestured.

"It can't be anything wrong?" My
cousin made no sign.

" She may have had experiences ?"

My cousin reflected a moment on the
possibilities of the deep-sea life. " She
has had them," he said.

" I don't care, if she has."

There came a pause.

" Look here, Melville," said Chatteris,
" I want to know this. Unless it's a
thing to be specially kept from me. . . .
I don't like being among a lot of people
who treat me as an outsider. What is
this something about Miss Waters?"

" What does Miss Glendower say ?"

" Vague things. She doesn't like her
and she won't say why. And Mrs. Bunt-
193

THE SEA LADY

ing goes about with discretion written
all over her. And she herself looks at
you — And that maid of hers looks —
The thing's worrying me."

" Why don't you ask the lady her-
self?"

" How can I, till I know what it is ?
Confound it ! I'm asking you plainly
enough."

" Well," said Melville, and at the mo-
ment he had really decided to tell Char-
teris. But he hung upon the manner of
presentation. He thought in the mo-
ment to say, " The truth is, she is a mer-
maid." Then as instantly he perceived
how incredible this would be. He always
suspected Chatteris of a capacity for
being continental and romantic. The
man might fly out at him for saying such
a thing of a lady.

A dreadful doubt fell upon Melville.
As you know, he had never seen that tail
194

SYMPTOMATIC

with his own eyes. In these surroundings
there came to him such an incredulity of
the Sea Lady as he had not felt even
when first Mrs. Bunting told him of hen
All about him was an atmosphere of solid
reality, such as one can breathe only in a
first-class London club. Everywhere pon-
derous arm-chairs met the eye. There
were massive tables in abundance and
match-boxes of solid rock. The matches
were of some specially large, heavy sort.
On a ponderous elephant-legged green
baize table near at hand were several
copies of the Times, the current Punch,
an inkpot of solid brass, and a paper
weight of lead. There are other dreams !
It seemed impossible. The breathing of
an eminent person in a chair in the far
corner became very distinct in that inter-
val. It was heavy and resolute like the
sound of a stone-mason's saw. It insisted
upon itself as the touchstone of reality.
195

THE SEA LADY

It seemed to say that at the first whisper
of a thing so utterly improbable as a mer-
maid it would snort and choke.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told
you," said Melville.

" Well, tell me— anyhow."

My cousin looked at an empty chair
beside him. It was evidently stuffed with
the very best horse-hair that money could
procure, stuffed with infinite skill and an
almost religious care. It preached in the
open invitation of its expanded arms that
man does not live by bread alone — inas-
much as afterwards he needs a nap. An
utterly dreamless chair !

Mermaids ?

He felt that he was after all quite pos-
sibly the victim of a foolish delusion,
hypnotised by Mrs. Bunting's beliefs. Was
there not some more plausible interpreta-
tion, some phrase that would lie out bridge-
ways from the plausible to the truth ?
196

SYMPTOMATIC

" It's no good," he groaned at last.

Chatteris had been watching him fur-
tively.

" Oh, I don't care a hang," he said,
and shied his second cigarette into the
massively decorated fireplace. " It's no
affair of mine."

Then quite abruptly he sprang to his
feet and gesticulated with an ineffectual
hand.

"You needn't," he said, and seemed
to intend to say many regrettable things.
Meanwhile until his intention ripened he
sawed the air with his ineffectual hand. I
fancy he ended by failing to find a thing
sufficiently regrettable to express the pun-
gency of the moment. He flung about
and went towards the door.

" Don't ! " he said to the back of the
newspaper of the breathing member.

" If you don't want to," he said to the
respectful waiter at the door.
197

THE SEA LADY

The hall-porter heard that he didn't
care — he was damned if he did !

" He might be one of these here
guests," said the hall-porter, greatly
shocked. " That's what comes of lettin'
'em in so young."

VI

Melville overcame an impulse to fol-
low him.

" Confound the fellow ! " said he.

And then as the whole outburst came
into focus, he said with still more empha-
sis, " Confound the fellow ! "

He stood up and became aware that
the member who had been asleep was now
regarding him with malevolent eyes. He
perceived it was a hard and invincible
malevolence, and that no petty apologetics
of demeanour could avail against it. He
turned about and went towards the door.
198

SYMPTOMATIC

The interview had done my cousin
good. His misery and distress had lifted.
He was presently bathed in a profound
moral indignation, and that is the very
antithesis of doubt and unhappiness.
The more he thought it over, the more
his indignation with Chatteris grew. That
sudden unreasonable outbreak altered all
the perspectives of the case. He wished
very much that he could meet Chatteris
again and discuss the whole matter from
a new footing.

" Think of it ! " He thought so viv-
idly and so verbally that he was nearly
talking to himself as he went along. It
shaped itself into an outspoken discourse
in his mind.

" Was there ever a more ungracious,
ungrateful, unreasonable creature than this
same Chatteris ? He was the spoiled child
of Fortune ; things came to him, things
were given to him, his very blunders
199

THE SEA LADY

brought more to him than other men's suc-
cesses. Out of every thousand men, nine
hundred and ninety-nine might well find
food for envy in this way luck had served
him. Many a one has toiled all his life and
taken at last gratefully the merest frac-
tion of all that had thrust itself upon this
insatiable thankless young man. Even
I," thought my cousin, " might envy him
— in several ways. And then, at the mere
first onset of duty, nay ! — at the mere first
whisper of restraint, this insubordination,
this protest and flight !

"Think !" urged my cousin, " of the
common lot of men. Think of the many
who suffer from hunger "

(It was a painful Socialistic sort of line
to take, but in his mood of moral indig-
nation my cousin pursued it relentlessly.)

" Think of many who suffer from hun-
ger, who lead lives of unremitting toil,
who go fearful, who go squalid, and withal

200

SYMPTOMATIC

strive, in a sort of dumb, resolute way, their
utmost to do their duty, or at any rate
what they think to be their duty. Think
of the chaste poor women in the world !
Think again of the many honest souls
who aspire to the service of their kind,
and are so hemmed about and preoccu-
pied that they may not give it ! And
then this pitiful creature comes, with his
mental gifts, his gifts of position and op-
portunity, the stimulus of great ideas, and
a fiancde, who is not only rich and beauti-
ful— she is beautiful ! — but also the best
of all possible helpers for him. And he
turns away. It isn't good enough. It
takes no hold upon his imagination, if you
please. It isn't beautiful enough for him,
and that's the plain truth of the matter.
What does the man want? What does
he expect ? . . ."

My cousin's moral indignation took
him the whole length of Piccadilly, and

14 201

THE SEA LADY

along by Rotten Row, and along the
flowery garden walks almost into Kensing-
ton High Street, and so around by the Ser-
pentine to his home, and it gave him such
an appetite for dinner as he had not had
for many days. Life was bright for him
all that evening, and he sat down at last,
at two o'clock in the morning, before a
needlessly lit, delightfully fusillading fire
in his flat to smoke one sound cigar before
he went to bed.

" No," he said suddenly, " I am not
mawbid either. I take the gifts the gods
will give me. I try to make myself happy,
and a few other people happy, too, to do a
few little duties decently, and that is
enough for me. I don't look too deeply
into things, and I don't look too widely
about things. A few old simple ideals

" H'm.

" Chatteris is a dreamer, with an impos-
sible, extravagant discontent. What does
202

SYMPTOMATIC

he dream of ? . . . Three parts he is a
dreamer and the fourth part — spoiled
child."

" Dreamer . . ."

" Other dreams . . ."

"What other dreams could she
mean ? "

My cousin fell into profound mus-
ings. Then he started, looked about him,
saw the time by his Rathbone clock, got
up suddenly and went to bed.

203

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

THE CRISIS

I

THE crisis came about a week from
that time — I say about because of Mel-
ville's conscientious inexactness in these
matters. And so far as the crisis goes, I
seem to get Melville at his best. He was
keenly interested, keenly observant, and
his more than average memory took some
excellent impressions. To my mind, at
any rate, two at least of these people come
out, fuller and more convincingly than
anywhere else in this painfully disinterred
story. He has given me here an Adeline
I seem to believe in, and something much
more like Chatteris than any of the broken
fragments I have had to go upon, and
204

THE CEISIS

amplify and fudge together so far. And
for all such transient lucidities in this
mysterious story, the reader no doubt will
echo my Heaven be thanked !

Melville was called down to par-
ticipate in the crisis at Sandgate by a
telegram from Mrs. Bunting, and his
first exponent of the situation was Fred
Bunting.

" Come down. Urgent. Please" was
the irresistible message from Mrs. Bunt-
ing. My cousin took the early train and
arrived at Sandgate in the forenoon.

He was told that Mrs. Bunting was up-
stairs with Miss Glendower and that she
implored him to wait until she could leave
her charge. " Miss Glendower not well,
then ? " said Melville. " No, sir, not at all
well," said the housemaid, evidently await-
ing a further question. "Where are the
others?" he asked casually. The three
younger young ladies had gone to Hythe,
205

THE SEA LADY

said the housemaid, with a marked omission
of the Sea Lady. Melville has an intense
dislike of questioning servants on points at
issue, so he asked nothing at all concern-
ing Miss Waters. This general absence
of people from the room of familiar occu-
pation conveyed the same suggested warn-
ing of crisis as the telegram. The house-
maid waited an instant longer and with-
drew.

He stood for a moment in the draw-
ing-room and then walked out upon the
veranda. He perceived a richly capari-
soned figure advancing towards him. It
was Fred Bunting. He had been taking
advantage of the general desertion of
home to bathe from the house. He was
wearing an umbrageous white cotton hat
and a striped blanket, and a more aggres-
sively manly pipe than any fully adult
male would ever dream of smoking, hung
from the corner of his mouth.
206

THE CRISIS

"Hello!" he said. "The mater sent
for you ? "

Melville admitted the truth of this
theory.

"There's ructions," said Fred, and re-
moved the pipe. The act offered conver-
sation.

" Where's Miss Waters ? "

" Gone."

"Back?"

" Lord, no ! Catch her ! She's gone
to Lummadge's Hotel. With her maid.
Took a suite."

" Why "

" The mater made a row with her."

"Whatever for?"

" Harry."

My cousin stared at the situation.

" It broke out," said Fred.

" What broke out ? "

"The row. Harry's gone daft on her,
Addy says."

207

THE SEA LADY

"On Miss Waters ?"

"Rather. Mooney. Didn't care for
his electioneering — didn't care for his ordi-
nary nourishment. Loose ends. Didn't
mention it to Adeline, but she began to
see it. Asked questions. Next day,
went off. London. She asked what
was up. Three days' silence. Then —
wrote to her."

Fred intensified all this by raising his
eyebrows, pulling down the corners of his
mouth and nodding portentously. " Eh ? "
he said, and then to make things clearer :
" Wrote a letter."

"He didn't write to her about Miss
Waters?"

" Don't know what he wrote about.
Don't suppose he mentioned her name,
but I dare say he made it clear enough.
All I know is that everything in the house
felt like elastic pulled tighter than it ought
to be for two whole days — everybody in a
208

THE CRISIS

sort of complicated twist — and then there
was a snap. All that time Addy was wri-
ting letters to him and tearing 'em up, and
no one could quite make it out. Every-
one looked blue except the Sea Lady.
She kept her own lovely pink. And at
the end of that time the mater began ask-
ing things, Adeline chucked writing, gave
the mater half a hint, mater took it all in
in an instant and the thing burst."

" Miss Glendower didn't ?"

"No, the mater did. Put it pretty
straight too — as the mater can. . . . She
didn't deny it. Said she couldn't help
herself, and that he was as much hers as
Adeline's. I heard that," said Fred shame-
lessly. " Pretty thick, eh ? — considering
he's engaged. And the mater gave it her
pretty straight. Said, ' I've been very
much deceived in you, Miss Waters — very
much indeed.' I heard her. . . ."
"And then?"

209

THE SEA LADY

"Asked her to go. Said she'd re-
quited us ill for taking her up when
nobody but a fisherman would have
looked at her."

"She said that?".

"Well, words to that effect."

" And Miss Waters went ? "

" In a first-class cab, maid and boxes in
another, all complete. Perfect lady. . . .
Couldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it
— the tail, I mean."

"And MissGlendower?"

"Addy? Oh, she's been going it.
Comes downstairs and does the pale-faced
heroine and goes upstairs and does the
broken-hearted part. / know. It's all
very well. You never had sisters. You
know "

Fred held his pipe elaborately out of
the way and protruded his face to a con-
fidential nearness.

" I believe they half like it," said Fred,
210

THE CRISIS

in a confidential half whisper. " Such a
go, you know. Mabel pretty near as bad.
And the girls. All making the very most
they can of it. Me ! I think Chatteris
was the only man alive to hear 'em. /
couldn't get up emotion as 'they do, if my
feet were being flayed. Cheerful home,
eh? For holidays."

"Where's — the principal gentleman?"
asked Melville a little grimly. " In Lon-
don?"

" Unprincipled gentleman, I call him,"
said Fred. " He's stopping down here at
the M£tropole. Stuck."

"Down here? Stuck?"

" Rather. Stuck and set about."

My cousin tried for sidelights. " What's
his attitude ? " he asked.

" Slump," said Fred with intensity.

"This little blow-off has rather as-
tonished him," he explained. " When he
wrote to say that the election didn't inter-
211

THE SEA LADY

est him for a bit, but he hoped to pull
around "

" You said you didn't know what he
wrote."

"I do that much," said Fred. "He
no more thought they'd have spotted that
it meant Miss Waters than a baby. But
women are so thundering sharp, you
know. They're born spotters. How it'll
all end "

" But why has he come to the M£tro-
pole?"

" Middle of the stage, I suppose," said
Fred.

"What's his attitude?"

" Says he's going to see Adeline and
explain everything — and doesn't do it. ...
Puts it off. And Adeline, as far as I can
gather, says that if he doesn't come down
soon, she's hanged if she'll see him, much
as her heart may be broken, and all that,
if she doesn't. You know."
212

THE CKISIS

"Naturally," said Melville, rather in-
consecutively. " And he doesn't ? "

" Doesn't stir."

" Does he see — the other lady ?"

"We don't know. We can't watch
him. But if he does he's clever "

"Why?"

"There's about a hundred blessed rela-
tives of his in the place — came like crows
for a corpse. I never saw such a lot.
Talk about a man of good old family — it's
decaying ! I never saw such a high old
family in my life. Aunts they are chiefly."

"Aunts?"

"Aunts. Say, they've rallied round him.
How they got hold of it I don't know.
Like vultures. Unless the mater — But
they're here. They're all at him — using
their influence with him, threatening to
cut off legacies and all that. There's one
old girl at Bate's, Lady Poynting Mallow
— least bit horsey, but about as all right as
213

THE SEA LADY

any of 'em — who's been down here twice.
Seems a trifle disappointed in Adeline.
And there's two aunts at Wampach's —
you know the sort that stop at Wam-
pach's— regular hothouse flowers — a water-
ing-potful of real icy cold water would
kill both of 'em. And there's one come
over from the Continent, short hair, short
skirts — regular terror — she's at the Pavil-
ion. They're all chasing round saying,
* Where is this woman-fish sort of thing ?
Let me peek ! ' "

" Does that constitute the hundred
relatives ? "

" Practically. The Wampachers are
sending for a Bishop who used to be his
schoolmaster "

" No stone unturned, eh?"

" None."

" And has he found out yet "

" That she's a mermaid ? I don't be-
lieve he has. The pater went up to tell
214

THE CRISIS

him. Of course, he was a bit out of
breath and embarrassed. And Chatteris
cut him down. 'At least let me hear
nothing against her,' he said. And the
pater took that and came away. Good
old pater. Eh?"

"And the aunts?"

"They're taking it in. Mainly they
grasp the fact that he's going to jilt Ade-
line, just as he jilted the American girl.
The mermaid side they seem to boggle at.
Old people like that don't take to a new
idea all at once. The Wampach ones are
shocked — but curious. They don't be-
lieve for a moment she really is a mer-
maid, but they want to know all about it.
And the one down at the Pavilion simply
said, ' Bosh ! How can she breathe under
water? Tell me that, Mrs. Bunting.
She's some sort of person you have picked
up, I don't know how, but mermaid she
cannot be.' They'd be all tremendously
215

THE SEA LADY

down on the mater, I think, for picking
her up, if it wasn't that they can't do
without her help to bring Addy round
again. Pretty mess all round, eh ? "

" I suppose the aunts will tell him ?"

"What?"

"About the tail."

" I suppose they will."

" And what then ? "

" Heaven knows ! Just as likely they
won't."

My cousin meditated on the veranda
tiles for a space.

" It amuses me," said Fred Bunting.

" Look here," said my cousin Melville,
" what am I supposed to do ? Why have
I been asked to come ? "

" I don't know. Stir it up a bit, I ex-
pect. Everybody do a bit — like the
Christmas pudding."

" But — " said Melville.

" I've been bathing," said Fred. " No-
216

Adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity.

THE CRISIS

body asked me to take a hand and I
didn't. It won't be a good pudding with-
out me, but there you are ! There's only
one thing I can see to do "

" It might be the right thing. What
is it?"

" Punch Chatteris's head."

" I don't see how that would help mat-
ters."

"Oh, it wouldn't help matters," said
Fred, adding with an air of conclusive-
ness, " There it is ! " Then adjusting the
folds of his blanket to a greater dignity,
and replacing his long extinct large pipe
between his teeth, he went on his way.
The tail of his blanket followed him re-
luctantly through the door. His bare feet
padded across the hall and became inau-
dible on the carpet of the stairs.

"Fred!" said Melville, going door-
ward with a sudden afterthought for fuller
particulars.

15 217

THE SEA LADY

But Fred had gone.

Instead, Mrs. Bunting appeared.

II

She appeared with traces of recent
emotion. " I telegraphed," she said.
" We are in dreadful trouble."

"Miss Waters, I gather "

" She's gone."

She went towards the bell and stopped.
" They'll get luncheon as usual," she said.
" You will be wanting your luncheon."

She came towards him with rising
hands. " You can not imagine," she said.
"That poor child!"

"You must tell me," said Melville.

" I simply do not know what to do.
I don't know where to turn." She came
nearer to him. She protested. " All that
I did, Mr. Melville, I did for the best. I
saw there was trouble. I could see that I
218

THE CEISIS

had been deceived, and I stood it as long
as I could. I had to speak at last."

My cousin by leading questions and
interrogative silences developed her story
a little.

"And every one," she said, "blames
me. Every one."

"Everybody blames everybody who
does anything, in affairs of this sort," said
Melville. " You mustn't mind that."

" I'll try not to," she said bravely.
" You know, Mr. Melville "

He laid his hand on her shoulder for
a moment. " Yes," he said very impress-
ively, and I think Mrs. Bunting felt
better.

" We all look to you," she said. " I don't
know what I should do without you."

"That's it," said Melville. " How do
things stand ? What am I to do ? "

" Go to him," said Mrs. Bunting, "and
put it all right."

. 219

THE SEA LADY

" But suppose — " began Melville
doubtfully.

" Go to her. Make her see what it
would mean for him and all of us."

He tried to get more definite instruc-
tions. " Don't make difficulties," implored
Mrs. Bunting. " Think of that poor girl
upstairs. Think of us all."

" Exactly," said Melville, thinking of
Chatteris and staring despondently out of
the window.

" Bunting, I gather "

" It is you or no one," said Mrs.
Bunting, sailing over his unspoken words.
" Fred is too young, and Randolph — !
He's not diplomatic. He — he hectors."

" Does he ? " exclaimed Melville.

" You should see him abroad. Often
— many times I have had to interfere. . . .
No, it is you. You know Harry so well.
He trusts you. You can say things to
him — no one else could say."
220

THE CRISIS

" That reminds me. Does he know "

" We don't know. How can we know ?
We know he is infatuated, that is all. He
is up there in Folkestone, and she is in
Folkestone, and they may be meeting "

My cousin sought counsel with him-
self.

" Say you will go ? " said Mrs. Bunting,
with a hand upon his arm.

" I'll go," said Melville, •" but I don't
see what I can do ! "

And Mrs. Bunting clasped his hand in
both of her own plump shapely hands and
said she knew all along that he would, and
that for coming down so promptly to her
telegram she would be grateful to him so
long as she had a breath to draw, and then
she added, as if it were part of the same
remark, that he must want his luncheon.

He accepted the luncheon proposition
in an incidental manner and reverted to
the question in hand.
221

THE SEA LADY

" Do you know what his attitude "

" He has written only to Addy."

" It isn't as if he had brought about
this crisis ? "

"It was Addy. He went away and
something in his manner made her write
and ask him the reason why So soon as
she had his letter saying he wanted to rest
from politics for a little, that somehow he
didn't seem to find the interest in life he
thought it deserved, she divined every-
thing "

" Everything ? Yes, but just what is
everything ?"

" That she had led him on."

"Miss Waters?"

" Yes."

My cousin reflected. So that was
what they considered to be everything !
" I wish I knew just where he stood," he
said at last, and followed Mrs. Bunting
luncheonward. In the course of that meal,
222

THE CEISIS

which was t6te-b,-t6te, it became almost un-
satisfactorily evident what a great relief
Melville's consent to interview Chatteris
was to Mrs. Bunting. Indeed, she seemed
to consider herself relieved from the great-
er portion of her responsibility in the
matter, since Melville was bearing her
burden. She sketched' out her defence
against the accusations that had no doubt
been levelled at her, explicitly and im-
plicitly.

" How was / to know ? " she asked,
and she told over again the story of that
memorable landing, but with new, exten-
uating details. It was Adeline herself
who had cried first, " She must be saved ! "
Mrs. Bunting made a special point of
that. " And what else was there for me
to do ? " she asked.

And as she talked, the problem before
my cousin assumed graver and yet graver
proportions. He perceived more and
223

THE SEA LADY

more clearly the complexity of the situ-
ation with which he was entrusted. In
the first place it was not at all clear that
Miss Glendower was willing to receive
back her lover except upon terms, and
the Sea Lady, he was quite sure, did
not mean to release him from any grip
she had upon him. They were preparing
to treat an elemental struggle as if it
were an individual case. It grew more
and more evident to him how entirely
Mrs. Bunting overlooked the essentially
abnormal nature of the Sea Lady, how
absolutely she regarded the business as a
mere every-day vacillation, a commonplace
outbreak of that jilting spirit which dwells,
covered deep, perhaps, but never entirely
eradicated, in the heart of man ; and how
confidently she expected him, with a little
tactful remonstrance and pressure, to re-
store the statu quo ante.

As for Chatteris ! — Melville shook his
224

THE CEISIS

head at the cheese, and answered Mrs.
Bunting abstractedly.

Ill

" She wants to speak to you," said
Mrs. Bunting, and Melville with a certain
trepidation went upstairs. He went up
to the big landing with the seats, to save
Adeline the trouble of coming down.
She appeared dressed in a black and violet
tea gown with much lace, and her dark
hair was done with a simple careful-
ness that suited it. She was pale, and
her eyes showed traces of tears, but she
had a certain dignity that differed from
her usual bearing in being quite uncon-
scious.

She gave him a limp hand and spoke
in an exhausted voice.

" You know— all ?" she asked.

" All the outline, anyhow."
225

THE SEA LADY

"Why has he done this to me?"
Melville looked profoundly sympa-
thetic through a pause.

" I feel," she said, "that it isn't coarse-

ness."

" Certainly not," said Melville.

"It is some mystery of the imagina-
tion that I cannot understand. I should
have thought — his career at any rate —
would have appealed . . ." She shook
her head and regarded a pot of ferns
fixedly for a space.

" He has written to you?" asked Mel-
ville.

" Three times," she said, looking up.

Melville hesitated to ask the extent of
that correspondence, but she left no need
for that.

" I had to ask him," she said. " He
kept it all from me, and I had to force it
from him before he would tell."

" Tell ! " said Melville, " what ? "
226

THE CKISIS

"What he felt for her and what he
felt for me."

"But did he ?"

" He has made it clearer. But still
even now. No, I don't understand."

She turned slowly and watched Mel-
ville's face 'as she spoke : " You know,
Mr. Melville, that this has been an enor-
mous shock to me. I suppose I never
really knew him. I suppose I — idealised
him. I thought he cared for — our work
at any rate. ... He did care for our
work. He believed in it. Surely he be-
lieved in it."

" He does," said Melville.

" And then — But how can he ? "

"He is — he is a man with rather a
strong imagination."

"Or a weak will?"

" Relatively— yes."

" It is so strange," she sighed. " It is
so inconsistent. It is like a child catching
227

THE SEA LADY

at a new toy. Do you know, Mr. Mel-
ville"— she hesitated — "all this has made
me feel old. I feel very much older,
very much wiser than he is. I cannot
help it. I am afraid it is for all women
... to feel that sometimes."

She reflected profoundly. " For all
women — The child, man ! I see now
just what Sarah Grand meant by that."

She smiled a wan smile. " I feel just
as if he had been a naughty child. And
I — I worshipped him, Mr. Melville," she
said, and her voice quivered.

My cousin coughed and turned about
to stare hard out of the window. He was,
he perceived, much more shockingly in-
adequate even than he had expected to be.

" If I thought she could make him
happy ! " she said presently, leaving a
hiatus of generous self-sacrifice.

" The case is — complicated," said Mel-
ville.

228

THE CRISIS

Her voice went on, clear and a little
high, resigned, impenetrably assured.

" But she would not. All his better
side, all his serious side — She would
miss it and ruin it all."

" Does he — " began Melville and
repented of the temerity of his ques-
tion.

" Yes ? " she said.

" Does he — ask to be released ?"

" No. . . . He wants to come back
to me."

" And you "

" He doesn't come."

" But do you — do you want him
back?"

" How can I say, Mr. Melville ? He
does not say certainly even that he wants
to come back."

My cousin Melville looked perplexed.
He lived on the superficies of emotion,
and these complexities in matters he had
229

THE SEA LADY

always assumed were simple, put him
out.

" There are times," she said, " when it
seems to me that my love for him is alto-
gether dead. . . . Think of the disillu-
sionment— the shock — the discovery of
such weakness."

My cousin lifted his eyebrows and
shook his head in agreement.

" His feet — to find his feet were of
clay!"

There came a pause.

" It seems as if I have never loved
him. And then — and then I think of all
the things that still might be."

Her voice made him look up, and he
saw that her mouth was set hard and tears
were running down her cheeks.

It occurred to my cousin, he says, that
he would touch her hand in a sympa-
thetic manner, and then it occurred to
him that he wouldn't. Her words rang
230

THE CKLSIS

in his thoughts for a space, and then he
said somewhat tardily, " He may still be
all those things."

" I suppose he may," she said slowly
and without colour. The weeping mo-
ment had passed.

" What is she ? " she changed abruptly.
"What is this being, who has come be-
tween him and all the realities of life?
What is there about her — ? And why
should I have to compete with her, be-
cause he — because he doesn't know his
own mind ? "

" For a man," said Melville, "to know
his own mind is — to have exhausted
one of the chief interests in life. After
that — ! A cultivated extinct volcano —
if ever it was a volcano."

He reflected egotistically for a space.
Then with a secret start he came back to
consider her.

"What is there," she said, with that
231

THE SEA LADY

deliberate attempt at clearness which was
one of her antipathetic qualities for Mel-
ville— "what is there that she has, that she
offers, that / ? "

Melville winced at this deliberate pro-
posal of appalling comparisons. All the
catlike quality in his soul came to his aid.
He began to edge away, and walk obliquely
and generally to shirk the issue. " My dear
Miss Glendower," he said, and tried to
make that seem an adequate reply.

" What is the difference ? " she insisted.

" There are impalpable things," waived
Melville. "They are above reason and
beyond describing."

" But you," she urged, " you take an
attitude, you must have an impression.
Why don't you — Don't you see, Mr.
Melville, this is very" — her voice caught
for a moment — "very vital for me. It
isn't kind of you, if you have impres-
sions— I'm sorry, Mr. Melville, if I
232

THE CRISIS

seem to be trying to get too much from
you. I — I want to know."

It came into Melville's head for a mo-
ment that this girl had something in her,
perhaps, that was just a little beyond his
former judgments.

" I must admit, I have a sort of im-
pression," he said.

" You are a man ; you know him ; you
know all sorts of things — all sorts of ways
of looking at things, I don't know. If
you could go so far — as to be frank."

" Well," said Melville and stopped.

She hung over him as it were, as a
tense silence.

" There is a difference," he admitted,
and still went unhelped.

" How can I put it ? I think in cer-
tain ways you contrast with her, in a way
that makes things easier for her. He has
— I know the thing sounds like cant, only
you know, he doesn't plead it in defence —
*6 233

THE SEA LADY

he has a temperament, to which she some-
times appeals more than you do."

" Yes, I know, but how ? "

"Well "

"Tell me."

" You are austere. You are restrained.
Life — for a man like Chatteris — is school-
ing. He has something — something per-
haps more worth having than most of us
have — but I think at times — it makes life
harder for him than it is for a lot of us.
Life comes at him, with limitations and
regulations. He knows his duty well
enough. And you — You mustn't mind
what I say too much, Miss Glendower — I
may be wrong."

"Go on," she said, "go on."

" You are too much — the agent general
of his duty."

" But surely ! — what else ?"

" I talked to him in London and then
I thought he was quite in the wrong.
234

THE CRISIS

Since that I've thought all sorts of things
— even that you might be in the wrong.
In certain minor things."

" Don't mind my vanity now," she
cried. " Tell me."

" You see you have defined things —
very clearly. You have made it clear to
him what you expect him to be, and what
you expect him to do. It is like having
built a house in which he is to live. For
him, to go to her is like going out of a
house, a very fine and dignified house, I
admit, into something larger, something
adventurous and incalculable. She is —
she has an air of being — natural. She is
as lax and lawless as the sunset, she is as
free and familiar as the wind. She doesn't
— if I may put it in this way — she doesn't
love and respect him when he is this, and
disapprove of him highly when he is that ;
she takes him altogether. She has the
quality of the open sky, of the flight of
235

THE SEA LADY

birds, of deep tangled places, she has the
quality of the high sea. That I think is
what she is for him, she is the Great Out-
side. You — you have the quality "

He hesitated.

" Go on," she insisted. " Let us get
the meaning."

" Of an edifice. ... I don't sympa-
thise with him," said Melville. " I am a
tame cat and I should scratch and mew at
the door directly I got outside of things.
I don't want to go out. The thought
scares me. But he is different."

" Yes," she said, " he is different."

For a time it seemed that Melville's
interpretation had hold of her. She stood
thoughtful. Slowly other aspects of the
thing came into his mind.

" Of course," she said, thinking as she

looked at him. "Yes. Yes. That is the

impression. That is the quality. But in

reality — There are other things in

236

THE CKISIS

the world beside effects and impressions.
After all, that is — an analogy. It is
pleasant to go out of houses and dwell-
ings into the open air, but most of us,
nearly all of us must live in houses."

" Decidedly," said Melville.

" He cannot — What can he do with
her? How can he live with her? What
life could they have in common ? "

" It's a case of attraction," said Mel-
ville, " and not of plans."

" After all," she said, " he must come
back — if I let him come back. He may
spoil everything now ; he may lose his
election and be forced to start again, lower
and less hopefully ; he may tear his heart
to pieces "

She stopped at a sob.

" Miss Glendower," said Melville ab-
ruptly.

" I don't think you quite understand."

" Understand what ? "
237

THE SEA LADY

" You think he cannot marry this —
this being who has come among us ? "

"How could he?"

"No — he couldn't. You think his
imagination has wandered away from you
— to something impossible. That gener-
ally, in an aimless way, he has cut himself
up for nothing, and made an inordinate
fool of himself, and that it's simply a
business of putting everything back into
place again."

He paused and she said nothing. But
her face was attentive. "What you do
not understand," he went on, "what no
one seems to understand, is that she
comes "

" Out of the sea."

" Out of some other world. She
comes, whispering that this life is a phan-
tom life, unreal, flimsy, limited, casting
upon everything a spell of disillusion-
ment "

238

THE CRISIS

" So that he "

" Yes, and then she whispers, ' There
are better dreams ! ' '

The girl regarded him in frank per-
plexity.

" She hints of these vague better
dreams, she whispers of a way "

"#%tf way?"

" I do not know what way. But it is
something — something that tears at the
very fabric of this daily life."

"You mean ?"

" She is a mermaid, she is a thing of
dreams and desires, a siren, a whisper and
a seduction. She will lure him with
her "

He stopped.

" Where ?" she whispered.

" Into the deeps."

"The deeps?"

They hung upon a long pause. Mel-
ville sought vagueness with infinite solici-
239

THE SEA LADY

tude, and could not find it. He blurted
out at last : " There can be but one way
out of this dream we are all dreaming,
you know."

"And that way?"

"That way — " began Melville and
dared not say it.

" You mean," she said, with a pale
face, half awakened to a new thought,
" the way is ? "

Melville shirked the word. He met
her eyes and nodded weakly.

" But how — ? " she asked.

" At any rate " — he said hastily, seek-
ing some palliative phrase — "at any rate,
if she gets him, this little world of
yours — There will be no coming back
for him, you know."

" No coming back ? " she said.

" No coming back," said Melville.

" But are you sure ? " she doubted.

"Sure?"

240

THE CEISIS

"That it is so?"

"That desire is desire, and the deep
the deep — yes/'

" I never thought — " she began and
stopped.

" Mr. Melville," she said, " you know I
don't understand. I thought — I scarcely
know what I thought. I thought he was
trivial and foolish to let his thoughts go
wandering. I agreed — I see your point —
as to the difference in our effect upon
him. But this — this suggestion that for
him she may be something determining
and final — After all, she "

" She is nothing," he said. " She is
the hand that takes hold of him, the shape
that stands for things unseen."

"What things unseen?"

My cousin shrugged his shoulders.
" Something we never find in life," he said.
" Something we are always seeking."

"But what?" she asked.
241

THE SEA LADY

Melville made no reply. She scruti-
nised his face for a time, and then looked
out at the sunlight again.

" Do you want him back ?" he said.

" I don't know."

" Do you want him back ? "

" I feel as if I had never wanted him
before."

"And now?"

" Yes. . . . But — if he will not come
back?"

" He will not come back," said Mel-
ville, " for the work."

" I know."

" He will not come back for his self-
respect — or any of those things."

" No."

" Those things, you know, are only
fainter dreams. All the palace you have
made for him is a dream. But "

-Yes?"

" He might come back — " he said, and
242

THE CEISIS

looked at her and stopped. He tells me
he had some vague intention of startling
her, rousing her, wounding her to some
display of romantic force, some insurgence
of passion, that might yet win Chatteris
back, and then in that moment, and like
a blow, it came to him how foolish such a
fancy had been. There she stood impene-
trably herself, limitedly intelligent, well-
meaning, imitative, and powerless. Her
pose, her face, suggested nothing but a
clear and reasonable objection to all that
had come to her, a critical antagonism, a
steady opposition. And then, amazingly,
she changed. She looked up, and sud-
denly held out both her hands, and there
was something in her eyes that he had
never seen before.

Melville took her hands mechanically,
and for a second or so they stood look-
ing with a sort of discovery into each
other's eyes.

243

THE SEA LADY

" Tell him," she said, with an astound-
ing perfection of simplicity, "to come
back to me. There can be no other thing
than what I am. Tell him to come back
to me ! "

"And ?"

" Tell him that."

" Forgiveness ? "

" No ! Tell him I want him. If he
will not come for that he will not come
at all. If he will not come back for that"
— she halted for a moment — " I do not
want him. No ! I do not want him. He
is not mine and he may go."

His passive hold of her hands became
a pressure. Then they dropped apart
again.

" You are very good to help us," she
said as he turned to go.

He looked at her. "You are very
good to help me," she said, and then :
" Tell him whatever you like if only he
244

THE CKISIS

will come back to me ! ... No ! Tell
him what I have said." He saw she
had something more to say, and stopped.
" You know, Mr. Melville, all this is like
a book newly opened to me. Are you
sure ?"

" Sure ? "

" Sure of what you say — sure of what
she is to him — sure that if he goes on he
will — " She stopped.

He nodded.

" It means—" she said and stopped
again.

" No adventure, no incident, but a
going out from all that this life has to
offer."

"You mean," she insisted, "you
mean ?"

" Death," said Melville starkly, and
for a space both stood without a word.

She winced, and remained looking
into his eyes. Then she spoke again.
245

THE SEA LADY

" Mr. Melville, tell him to come back
to me."

"And ?"

"Tell him to come back to me, or" —
a sudden note of passion rang in her voice
— " if I have no hold upon him, let him
go his way."

« But—" said Melville.

" I know," she cried, with her face set,
" I know. But if he is mine he will come
to me, and if he is not — Let him dream
his dream."

Her clenched hand tightened as she
spoke. He saw in her face she would
say no more, that she wanted urgently
to leave it there. He turned again to-
wards the staircase. He glanced at her
and went down.

As he looked up from the bend of
the stairs she was still standing in the
light.

He was moved to proclaim himself in
246

THE CRISIS

some manner her adherent, but he could
think of nothing better than : " Whatever
I can do I will." And so, after a curious
pause, he departed, rather stumblingly,
from her sight.

IV

After this interview it was right and
proper that Melville should have gone at
once to Chatteris, but the course of
events in the world does occasionally dis-
play a lamentable disregard for what is
right and proper. Points of view were
destined to crowd upon him that day- —
for the most part entirely unsympathetic
points of view. He found Mrs. Bunting
in the company of a boldly trimmed bon-
net in the hall, waiting, it became clear,
to intercept him.

As he descended, in a state of extreme
preoccupation, the boldly trimmed bonnet
247

THE SEA LADY

revealed beneath it a white-faced, resolute
person in a duster and sensible boots.
This stranger, Mrs. Bunting made appar-
ent, was Lady Poynting Mallow, one of
the more representative of the Chatteris
aunts. Her ladyship made a few enquiries
about Adeline with an eye that took Mel-
ville's measure, and then, after agreeing to
a number of the suggestions Mrs. Bunting
had to advance, proposed that he should
escort her back to her hotel. He was
much too exercised with Adeline to dis-
cuss the proposal. " I walk," she said.
"And we go along the lower road."

He found himself walking.

She remarked, as the Bunting door
closed behind them, that it was always a
comfort to have to do with a man ; and
there was a silence for a space.

I don't think at that time Melville
completely grasped the fact that he had a
companion. But presently his medita-
248

THE CRISIS

tions were disturbed by her voice. He
started.

" I beg your pardon," he said.

" That Bunting woman is a fool," re-
peated Lady Poynting Mallow.

There was a slight interval for con-
sideration.

" She's an old friend of mine," said
Melville.

" Quite possibly," said Lady Poynting
Mallow.

The position seemed a little awkward
to Melville for a moment. He flicked a
fragment of orange peel into the road.
" I want to get to the bottom of all this,"
said Lady Poynting Mallow. "Who is
this other woman ? "

"What other woman ?"

" Tertium quid" said Lady Poynting
Mallow, with a luminous incorrectness.

" Mermaid, I gather," said Melville.

" What's the objection to her ? "

17 249

THE SEA LADY

"Tail."

" Fin and all?"

" Complete."

"You're sure of it?"

" Certain."

" How do you know ? "

" I'm certain," repeated Melville with
a quite unusual testiness.

The lady reflected.

" Well, there are worse things in the
world than a fishy tail," she said at
last.

Melville saw no necessity for a reply.
" H'm," said Lady Poynting Mallow, ap-
parently by way of comment on his silence,
and for a space they went on.

"That Glendower girl is a fool too,"
she added after a pause.

My cousin opened his mouth and shut

it again. How can one answer when

ladies talk in this way ? But if he did

not answer, at any rate his preoccupation

250

THE CKISIS

was gone. He was now acutely aware of
the determined person at his side.

" She has means ? " she asked abruptly.

4 'Miss Glendower?"

" No. I know all about her. The
other?"

"The mermaid?"

" Yes, the mermaid. Why not ? "

" Oh, she — Very considerable means.
Galleons. Phoenician treasure ships,
wrecked frigates, submarine reefs "

" Well, that's all right. And now will
you tell me, Mr. Melville, why shouldn't
Harry have her ? What if she is a mer-
maid ? It's no worse than an American
silver mine, and not nearly so raw and ill-
bred."

"In the first place there's his engage-
ment "

"Oh, that!"

"And in the next there's the Sea
Lady."

251

THE SEA LADY

" But I thought she "

" She's a mermaid."

" It's no objection. So far as I can
see, she'd make an excellent wife for him.
And, as a matter of fact, down here she'd
be able to help him in just the right way.
The member here — he'll be fighting — this
Sassoon man — makes a lot of capital out
of deep-sea cables. Couldn't be better.
Harry could dish him easily. That's all
right. Why shouldn't he have her ? "

She stuck her hands deeply into the
pockets of her dust-coat, and a china-blue
eye regarded Melville from under the
brim of the boldly trimmed bonnet.

"You understand clearly she is a
properly constituted mermaid with a real
physical tail ? "

"Well?" said Lady Poynting Mallow.

"Apart from any question of Miss
Glendower "

"That's understood."
252

THE CKISIS

" I think that such a marriage would
be impossible."
l "Why?"

My cousin played round the question.
" She's an immortal, for example, with a
past."

" Simply makes her more interest-
ing."

Melville tried to enter into her point
of view. "You think," he said, "she
would go to London for him, and marry
at St. George's, Hanover Square, and pay
for a mansion in Park Lane and visit just
anywhere he liked ? "

" That's precisely what she would do.
Just now, with a Court that is waking
up-

" It's precisely what she won't do," said
Melville.

" But any woman would do it who
had the chance."

" She's a mermaid."
253

THE SEA LADY

" She's a fool," said Lady Poynting
Mallow.

" She doesn't even mean to marry
him ; it doesn't enter into her code."

" The hussy ! What does she mean ? "

My cousin made a gesture seaward.
" That ! " he said. " She's a mermaid."

"What?"

" Out there."

"Where?"

" There ! "

Lady Poynting Mallow scanned the
sea as if it were some curious new ob-
ject. " It's an amphibious outlook for
the family," she said after reflection.
" But even then — if she doesn't care for
society and it makes Harry happy — and
perhaps after they are tired of — rusti-
cating "

" I don't think you fully realise that
she is a mermaid," said Melville ; " and
Chatteris, you know, breathes air."
254

THE CKISIS

"That is a difficulty," admitted Lady
Poynting Mallow, and studied the sunlit
offing for a space.

" I don't see why it shouldn't be
managed for all that," she considered
after a pause.

" It can't be," said Melvilte with arid
emphasis.

" She cares for him?"

" She's come to fetch him."

" If she wants him badly he might
make terms. In these affairs it's always
one or other has to do the buying. She'd
have to marry — anyhow."

My cousin regarded her impenetrably
satisfied face.

" He could have a yacht and a diving
bell," she suggested ; "if she wanted him
to visit her people."

" They are pagan demigods, I believe,
and live in some mythological way in the
Mediterranean."

255

THE SEA LADY

" Dear Harry's a pagan himself — so
that doesn't matter, and as for being
mythological — all good families are. He
could even wear a diving dress if one
could be found to suit him."

" I don't think that anything of the
sort is possible for a moment."

" Simply because you've never been a
woman in love," said Lady Poynting
Mallow with an air of vast experience.

She continued the conversation. " If
it's sea water she wants it would be quite
easy to fit up a tank wherever they lived,
and she could easily have a bath chair
like a sitz bath on wheels. . . . Really,
Mr. Milvain "

" Melville."

" Mr. Melville, I don't see where your
' impossible ' comes in."

" Have you seen the lady ?"

" Do you think I've been in Folke-
stone two days doing nothing ? "
256

THE CRISIS

" You don't mean you've called on her?"

" Dear, no ! It's Harry's place to
settle that. But I've seen her in her
bath chair on the Leas, and I'm certain
I've never seen any one who looked so
worthy of dear Harry. Never ! "

"Well, well," said Melville. "Apart
from any other considerations, you know,
there's Miss Glen dower."

" I've never regarded her as a suitable
wife for Harry."

" Possibly not. Still— she exists."

" So many people do," said Lady
Poynting Mallow.

She evidently regarded that branch of
the subject as dismissed.

They pursued their way in silence.

"What I wanted to ask you, Mr.
Milvain "

" Melville."

" Mr. Melville, is just precisely where
you come into this business ? "
257

THE SEA LADY

" I'm a friend of Miss Glendower."

" Who wants him back."

" Frankly— yes."

" Isn't she devoted to him ?"

" I presume as she's engaged "

" She ought to be devoted to him —
yes. Well, why can't she see that she
ought to release him for his own good ? "

" She doesn't see it's for his good.
Nor do I."

" Simply an old-fashioned prejudice
because the woman's got a tail. Those
old frumps at Wampach's are quite of
your opinion."

Melville shrugged his shoulders.

"And so I suppose you're going to
bully and threaten on account of Miss
Glendower. . . . You'll do no good."

" May I ask what you are going to
do?"

" What a good aunt always does."

"And that?"

258

THE CEISIS

" Let him do what he likes."

" Suppose he wants to drown him-
self ? "

" My dear Mr. Milvain, Harry isn't a
fool."

" I've told you she's a mermaid."

"Ten times."

A constrained silence fell between
them.

It became apparent they were near the
Folkestone Lift.

" You'll do no good," said Lady Poyn-
ting Mallow.

Melville's escort concluded at the lift
station. There the lady turned upon him.

"I'm greatly obliged to you for com-
ing, Mr. Milvain," she said; "and very
glad to hear your views of this matter.
It's a peculiar business, but I hope we're
sensible people. You think over what I
have said. As a friend of Harry's. You
are a friend of Harry's?"
259

THE SEA LADY

" We've known each other some
years."

" I feel sure you will come round to
my point of view sooner or later. It is
so obviously the best thing for him."

" There's Miss Glendower."

" If Miss Glendower is a womanly
woman, she will be ready to make any
sacrifice for his good."

And with that they parted.

In the course of another minute Mel-
ville found himself on the side of the road
opposite the lift station, regarding the
ascending car. The boldly trimmed bon-
net, vivid, erect, assertive, went gliding
upward, a perfect embodiment of sound
common sense. His mind was lapsing
once again into disorder ; he was stunned,
as it were, by the vigour of her ladyship's
view. Could any one not absolutely right
be quite so clear and emphatic ? And if
so, what became of all that oppression of
260

THE CRISIS

foreboding, that sinister promise of an
escape, that whisper of " other dreams,"
that had dominated his mind only a short
half-hour before ?

He turned his face back to Sandgate,
his mind a theatre of warring doubts.
Quite vividly he could see the Sea Lady as
Lady Poynting Mallow saw her, as some-
thing pink and solid and smart and wealthy,
and, indeed, quite abominably vulgar, and
yet quite as vividly he recalled her as she
had talked to him in the garden, her face
full of shadows, her eyes of deep mystery,
and the whisper that made all the world
about him no more than a flimsy, thin
curtain before vague and wonderful, and
hitherto, quite unsuspected things.

V

Chatteris was leaning against the rail-
ings. He started violently at Melville's
261

THE SEA LADY

hand upon his shoulder. They made awk-
ward greetings.

"The fact is," said Melville, " I— I
have been asked to talk to you."

" Don't apologise," said Chatteris.
" I'm glad to have it out with some

one."

There was a brief silence.

They stood side by side — looking down
upon the harbour. Behind, the evening
band played remotely and the black little
promenaders went to and fro under the
tall electric lights. I think Chatteris de-
cided to be very self-possessed at first — a
man of the world.

"It's a gorgeous night," he said.

" Glorious," said Melville, playing up
to the key set.

He clicked his cutter on a cigar.
" There was something you wanted me
to tell you "

" I know all that," said Chatteris with
262

THE CRISIS

the shoulder towards Melville becoming
obtrusive. " I know everything."

" You have seen and talked to her ?"

" Several times."

There was perhaps a minute's pause.

"What are you going to do?" asked
Melville.

Chatteris made no answer and Mel-
ville did not repeat his question.

Presently Chatteris turned about.
" Let's walk," he said, and they paced
westward, side by side.

He made a little speech. "I'm sorry
to give everybody all this trouble," he
said with an air of having prepared his
sentences ; " I suppose there is no ques-
tion that I have behaved like an ass. I
am profoundly sorry. Largely it is my
own fault. But you know — so far as the
overt kick-up goes — there is a certain
amount of blame attaches to our out-
spoken friend Mrs. Bunting."
263

THE SEA LADY

" I'm afraid there is," Melville ad-
mitted.

" You know there are times when one
is under the necessity of having moods.
It doesn't help them to drag them into
general discussion."

" The mischief's done."

" You know Adeline seems to have
objected to the presence of — this sea
lady at a very early stage. Mrs. Bunt-
ing overruled her. Afterwards when there
was trouble she seems to have tried to
make up for it."

" I didn't know Miss Glendower had
objected."

" She did. She seems to have seen —
ahead."

Chatteris reflected. "Of course all
that doesn't excuse me in the least. But
it's a sort of excuse for your being dragged
into this bother."

He said something less distinctly
264

THE CRISIS

about a " stupid bother " and " private
affairs."

They found themselves drawing near
the band and already on the outskirts of
its territory of votaries. Its cheerful
rhythms became insistent. The canopy
of the stand was a focus of bright light,
music-stands and instruments sent out
beams of reflected brilliance, and a lumi-
nous red conductor in the midst of the
lantern guided the ratatoo-tat, ratatoo-tat
of a popular air. Voices, detached frag-
ments of conversation, came to our talkers
and mingled impertinently with their
thoughts.

" I wouldn't 'ave no truck with 'im,
not after that," said a young person to
her friend.

" Let's get out of this," said Chatteris
abruptly.

They turned aside from the high path
of the Leas to the head of some steps
is 265

THE SEA LADY

that led down the declivity. In a few
moments it was as if those imposing
fronts of stucco, those many-windowed
hotels, the electric lights on the tall masts,
the band-stand and miscellaneous holiday
British public, had never existed. It is
one of Folkestone's best effects, that
black quietness under the very feet of a
crowd. They no longer heard the band
even, only a remote suggestion of music
filtered to them over the brow. The
black-treed slopes fell from them to the
surf below, and out at sea were the lights
of many ships. Away to the westward
like a swarm of fire-flies hung the lights
of Hythe. The two men sat down on a
vacant seat in the dimness. For a time
neither spoke. Chatteris impressed Mel-
ville with an air of being on the defen-
sive. He mur ^ed in a meditative
undertone, " T ! i ;v.': 'ave no truck with
Jim not aftf

266

THE CEISIS

" I will admit by every standard," he
said aloud, " that I have been flappy and
feeble and wrong. Very. In these things
there is a prescribed and definite course.
To hesitate, to have two points of view,
is condemned by all right-thinking peo-
ple. . . . Still — one has the two points of
view. . . . You have come up from
Sandgate ? "

"Yes."

" Did you see Miss Glendower?"

-Yes."

" Talked to her ? . . . I suppose —
What do you think of her ? "

His cigar glowed into an expectant
brightness while Melville hesitated at his
answer, and showed his eyes thoughtful
upon Melville's face.

" I've never thought her — " Melville

sought more diplomatic phrasing. " I've

never found her exceptionally attractive

before. Handsome, you know, but not —

267

THE SEA LADY

winning. But this time, she seemed . . .
rather splendid."

"She is," said Chatteris, "she is."

He sat forward and began flicking
imaginary ash from the end of his cigar.

" She is splendid," he admitted. " You
— only begin to imagine. You don't, my
dear man, know that girl. She is not —
quite — in your line. She is, I assure you,
the straightest and cleanest and clearest
human being I have ever met. She be-
lieves so firmly, she does right so simply,
there is a sort of queenly benevolence, a
sort of integrity of benevolence "

He left the sentence unfinished, as
if unfinished it completely expressed his
thought.

" She wants you to go back to her,"
said Melville bluntly.

" I know," said Chatteris and flicked
again at that ghostly ash. " She has writ-
ten that. . . . That's just where her com-
268

THE CKISIS

plete magnificence comes in. She doesn't
fence and fool about, as the she-women
do. She doesn't squawk and say, ' You've
insulted me and everything's at an end ; '
and she doesn't squawk and say, ' For
God's sake come back to me ! ' She
doesn't say, she ' won't 'ave no truck with
me not after this.' She writes — straight.
I don't believe, Melville, I half knew her
until all this business came up. She
comes out. . . . Before that it was, as you
said, and I quite perceive — I perceived
all along — a little too — statistical."

He became meditative, and his cigar
glow waned and presently vanished alto-
gether.

" You are going back ?"

" By Jove ! Yes"

Melville stirred slightly and then they
both sat rigidly quiet for a space. Then
abruptly Chatteris flung away his extinct
cigar. He seemed to fling many other

269

THE SEA LADY

things away with that dim gesture. " Of
course," he said, " I shall go back.

" It is not my fault," he insisted, " that
this trouble, this separation, has ever
arisen. I was moody, I was preoccupied,
I know — things had got into my head.
But if I'd been left alone. . . .

" I have been forced into this posi-
tion," he summarised.

" You understand," said Melville, " that
— though I think matters are indefined
and distressing just now — I don't attach
blame — anywhere. "

" You're open-minded," said Chatteris.
"That's just your way. And I can im-
agine how all this upset and discomfort
distresses you. You're awfully good to
keep so open-minded and not to consider
me an utter outcast, an ill-regulated dis-
turber of the order of the world."

" It's a distressing state of affairs," said
Melville. " But perhaps I understand
270

THE CKISIS

the forces pulling at you — better than you
imagine."

" They're very simple, I suppose."

" Very."

-And yet ?"

"Well?"

He seemed to hesitate at a dangerous
topic. " The other," he said.

Melville's silence bade him go on.

He plunged from his prepared atti-
tude. "What is it? Why should — this
being — come into my life, as she has done,
if it is so simple ? What is there about
her, or me, that has pulled me so astray ?
She has, you know. Here we are at sixes
and sevens ! It's not the situation, it's the
mental .conflict. Why am I pulled about ?
She has got into my imagination. How ?
I haven't the remotest idea."

" She's beautiful," meditated Melville.

" She's beautiful certainly. But so is
Miss Glendower."

271

THE SEA LADY

" She's very beautiful. I'm not blind,
Chatteris. She's beautiful in a different
way."

" Yes, but that's only the name for the
effect. Why is she very beautiful ? "

Melville shrugged his shoulders.

" She's not beautiful to every one."

" You mean ?"

" Bunting keeps calm."

"Oh— A? !"

"And other people don't seem to see
it— as I do."

" Some people seem to see no beauty
at all, as we do. With emotion, that is."

"Why do we?"

-We see— finer."

" Do we ? Is it finer ? Why should
it be finer to see beauty where it is fatal
to us to see it ? Why ? Unless we are to
believe there is no reason in things, why
should this — impossibility, be beautiful to
any one anyhow ? Put it as a matter of
272

THE CRISIS

reason, Melville. Why should her smile
be so sweet to me, why should her voice
move me ! Why her's and not Adeline's ?
Adeline has straight eyes and clear eyes
and fine eyes, and all the difference there
can be, what is it ? An infinitesimal curv-
ing of the lid, an infinitesimal difference
in the lashes — and it shatters everything —
in this way. Who could measure the dif-
ference, who could tell the quality that
makes me swim in the sound of her voice.
. . . The difference? After all, it's a
visible thing, it's a material thing ! It's in
my eyes. By Jove ! " he laughed abruptly.
" Imagine old Helmholtz trying to gauge
it with a battery of resonators, or Spencer
in the light of Evolution and the Environ-
ment explaining it away ! "

" These things are beyond measure-
ment," said Melville.

" Not if you measure them by their
effect," said Chatteris. "And anyhow,
273

THE SEA LADY

why do they take us ? That is the ques-
tion I can't get away from just now."

My cousin meditated, no doubt with
his hands deep in his trousers' pockets.
" It is illusion," he said. " It is a sort of
glamour. After all, look at it squarely.
What is she ? What can she give you ?
She promises you vague somethings. . . .
She is a snare, she is deception. She is
the beautiful mask of death."

" Yes," said Chatteris. " I know."

And then again, " I know.

" There is nothing for me to learn
about that," he said. " But why — why
should the mask of death be beautiful ?
After all — We get our duty by good
hard reasoning. Why should reason and
justice carry everything ? Perhaps after
all there are things beyond our reason,
perhaps after all desire has a claim on
us?"

He stopped interrogatively and Mel-
274

THE CRISIS

ville was profound. " I think," said my
cousin at last, " Desire has a claim on us.
Beauty, at any rate

" I mean," he explained, " we are hu-
man beings. We are matter with minds
growing out of ourselves. We reach
downward into the beautiful wonderland
of matter, and upward to something — "
He stopped, from sheer dissatisfaction
with the image. " In another direction,
anyhow," he tried feebly. He jumped at
something that was not quite his meaning.
" 'Man is a sort of half-way house — he must
compromise."

"As you do?"

" Well. Yes. I try to strike a bal-
ance."

" A few old engravings — good, I sup-
pose— a little luxury in furniture and
flowers, a few things that come within
your means. Art — in moderation, and a
few kindly acts of the pleasanter sort, a
2/5

THE SEA LADY

certain respect for truth ; duty — also in
moderation. Eh? It's just that even
balance that I cannot contrive. I can-
not sit down to the oatmeal of this daily
life and wash it down with a temperate
draught of beauty and water. Art ! . . .
I suppose I'm voracious, I'm one of the
unfit — for the civilised stage. I've sat
down once, I've sat down twice, to per-
fectly sane, secure, and reasonable things.
. . . It's not my way."

He repeated, " It's not my way."
Melville, I think, said nothing to that.
He was distracted from the immediate
topic by the discussion of his own way
of living. He was lost in egotistical
comparisons. No doubt he was on the
verge of saying, as most of us would
have been under the circumstances : " I
don't think you quite understand my po-
sition."

" But, after all, what is the good of
276

THE CKISIS

talking in this way ? " exclaimed Chatteris
abruptly. " I am simply trying to elevate
the whole business by dragging in these
wider questions. It's justification, when
I didn't mean to justify. I have to choose
between life with Adeline and this woman
out of the sea."

"Who is Death."

" How do I know she is Death ?"

" But you said you had made your
choice ! "

" I have."

He seemed to recollect.

" I have," he corroborated. " I told
you. I am going back to see Miss Glen-
dower to-morrow.

" Yes." He recalled further portions
of what I believe was some prepared and
ready - phrased decision — some decision
from which the conversation had drifted.
"The need of my life is discipline, the
habit of persistence, of ignoring side
277

THE SEA LADY

issues and wandering thoughts. Disci-
pline ! "

" And work."

" Work, if you like to put it so ; it's
the same thing. The trouble so far has
been I haven't worked hard enough. I've
stopped to speak to the woman by the
wayside. I've paltered with compromise,
and the other thing has caught me. . . .
I've got to renounce it, that is all."

" It isn't that your work is contempt-
ible."

" By Jove ! No. It's — arduous. It
has its dusty moments. There are places
to climb that are not only steep but
muddy "

" The world wants leaders. It gives
a man of your class a great deal. Lei-
sure. Honour. Training and high tradi-
tions—

"And it expects something back. I
know. I am wrong — have been wrong
278

THE CRISIS

anyhow. This dream has taken me won-
derfully. And I must renounce it. After
all it is not so much — to renounce a
dream. It's no more than deciding to
live. There are big things in the world
for men to do."

Melville produced an elaborate con-
ceit. "If there is no Venus Anadyo-
mene," he said, " there is Michael and his
Sword."

" The stern angel in armour ! But
then he had a good palpable dragon to
slash and not his own desires. And our
way nowadays is to do a deal with the
dragons somehow, raise the minimum
wage and get a better housing for the
working classes by hook or by crook."

Melville does not think that was a fair
treatment of his suggestion.

" No," said Chatteris, " I've no doubt
about the choice. I'm going to fall in — •
with the species ; I'm going to take my
279

THE SEA LADY

place in the ranks in that great battle for
the future which is the meaning of life.
I want a moral cold bath and I mean to
take one. This lax dalliance with dreams
and desires must end. I will make a time
table for my hours and a rule for my life,
I will entangle my honour in controver-
sies, I will give myself to service, as a
man should do. Clean - handed work,
struggle, and performance."

"And there is Miss Glendower, you
know."

" Rather ! " said Chatteris, with a faint
touch of insincerity. "Tall and straight-
eyed and capable. By Jove ! if there's to
be no Venus Anadyomene, at any rate
there will be a Pallas Athene. It is she
who plays the reconciler."

And then he said these words : " It
won't be so bad, you know."

Melville restrained a movement of im-
patience, he tells me, at that.
280

THE CEISIS

Then Chatteris, he says, broke into a
sort of speech. "The case is tried," he
said, "the judgment has been given. I
am that I am. I've been through it all
and worked it out. I am a man and I
must go a man's way. There is Desire, the
light and guide of the world, a beacon on
a headland blazing out. Let it burn ! Let
it burn ! The road runs near it and by it
— and past. ... I've made my choice.
I've got to be a man, I've got to live a
man and die a man and carry the burden
of my class and time. There it is ! I've
had the dream, but you see I keep hold
of reason. Here, with the flame burning,
I renounce it. I make my choice. . . .
Renunciation ! Always — renunciation !
That is life for all of us. We have de-
sires, only to deny them, senses that we
all must starve. We can live only as a
part of ourselves. Why should / be ex-
empt. For me, she is evil. For me she
19 281

THE SEA LADY

is death. . . . Only why have I seen her
face ? Why have I heard her voice ? . . ."

VI

They walked out of the shadows and
up a long sloping path until Sandgate, as
a little line of lights, came into view below.
Presently they came out upon the brow
and walked together (the band playing
with a remote and sweetening indistinct-
ness far away behind them) towards the
cliff at the end. They stood for a little
while in silence looking down. Mel-
ville made a guess at his companion's
thoughts.

" Why not come down to-night ? " he
asked.

"On a night like this!" Chatteris

turned about suddenly and regarded the

moonlight and the sea. He stood quite

still for a space, and that cold white radi-

282

THE CRISIS

ance gave an illusory strength and decision
to his face. " No," he said at last, and the
word was almost a sigh.

" Go down to the girl below there.
End the thing. She will be there, think-
ing of you "

"No," said Chatteris, "no."

"It's not ten yet," Melville tried
again.

Chatteris thought. " No," he answered,
"not to-night. To-morrow, in the light of
everyday.

" I want a good, gray, honest day,"
he said, "with a south-west wind. . . .
These still, soft nights ! How can you
expect me to do anything of that sort
to-night ? "

And then he murmured as if he
found the word a satisfying word to repeat,
" Renunciation."

" By Jove !" he said with the most as-
tonishing transition, " but this is a night
.283

THE SEA LADY

out of fairyland ! Look at the lights of
those windows below there and then up —
up into this enormous blue of sky. And
there, as if it were fainting with moon-
light— shines one star."

284

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT

I

JUST precisely what happened after
that has been the most impossible thing
to disinter. I have given all the things
that Melville remembered were said, I
have linked them into a conversation
and checked them by my cousin's after-
thoughts, and finally I have read the
whole thing over to him. It is of course
no verbatim rendering, but it is, he says,
closely after the manner of their talk, the
gist was that, and things of that sort were
said. And when he left Chatteris, he
fully believed that the final and conclusive
thing was said. And then he says it
came into his head that, apart from and
285

THE SEA LADY

outside this settlement, there still re-
mained a tangible reality, capable of ac-
tion, the Sea Lady. What was she going
to do? The thought toppled him back
into a web of perplexities again. It car-
ried him back into a state of inconclusive
interrogation past Lummidge's Hotel.

The two men had gone back to the
Metropole and had parted with a firm
handclasp outside the glare of the big
doorway. Chatteris went straight in, Mel-
ville fancies, but he is not sure. I under-
stand Melville had some private thinking
to do on his own account, and I conceive
him walking away in a state of profound
preoccupation. Afterwards the fact that
the Sea Lady was not to be abolished by
renunciations, cropped up in his mind,
and he passed back along the Leas, as I
have said. His inconclusive interroga-
tions elicited at the utmost that Lum-
midge's Private and Family Hotel is
286

MOONSHINE TEIUMPHANT

singularly like any other hotel of its
class. Its windows tell no secrets. And
there Melville's narrative ends.

With that my circumstantial record
necessarily comes to an end also. There
are sources, of course, and glimpses. Par-
ker refuses, unhappily — as I explained.
The chief of these sources are, first,
Gooch, the valet employed by Chatteris;
and, secondly, the hall-porter of Lum-
midge's Private and Family Hotel.

The valet's evidence is precise, but has
an air of being irrelevant. He witnesses
that at a quarter past eleven he went up
to ask Chatteris if there was anything
more to do that night, and found him
seated in an arm-chair before the open
window, with his chin upon his hands,
staring at nothing — which, indeed, as
Schopenhauer observes in his crowning
passage, is the whole of human life.

" More to do ?" said Chatteris.
287

THE SEA LADY

" Yessir," said the valet.

" Nothing," said Chatteris, " absolutely
nothing." And the valet, finding this an-
swer quite satisfactory, wished him good-
night and departed,

Probably Chatteris remained in this
attitude for a considerable time — half an
hour, perhaps, or more. Slowly, it would
seem, his mood underwent a change. At
some definite moment it must have been
that his lethargic meditation gave way to
a strange activity, to a sort of hysterical
reaction against all his resolves and renun-
ciations. His first action seems to me
grotesque — and grotesquely pathetic. He
went into his dressing-room, and in the
morning "his clo'es," said the valet, "was
shied about as though 'e'd lost a ticket."
This poor worshipper of beauty and the
dream shaved ! He shaved and washed
and he brushed his hair, and, his valet
testifies, one of the brushes got "shied"
288

MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT

behind the bed. Even this throwing about
of brushes seems to me to have done little
or nothing to palliate his poor human pre-
occupation with the toilette. He changed
his gray flannels — which suited him very
well — for his white ones, which suited
him extremely. He must deliberately and
conscientiously have made himself quite
" lovely," as a schoolgirl would have put it.

And having capped his great "renun-
ciation " by these proceedings, he seems to
have gone straight to Lummidge's Private
and Family Hotel and demanded to see
the Sea Lady.

She had retired.

This came from Parker, and was de-
livered in a chilling manner by the hall-
porter.

Chatteris swore at the hall -porter.
" Tell her I'm here," he said.

" She's retired," said the hall -porter
with official severity.

289

THE SEA LADY

"Will you tell her I'm here?" said
Chatteris, suddenly white.

"What name, sir?" said the hall-por-
ter, in order, as he explains, "to avoid a
frackass."

" Chatteris. Tell her I must see her
now. Do you hear, now f "

The hall -porter went to Parker, and
came half-way back. He wished to good-
ness he was not a hall-porter. The man-
ager had gone out — it was a stagnant hour.
He decided to try Parker again ; he raised
his voice.

The Sea Lady called to Parker from
the inner room. There was an interval of
tension.

I gather that the Sea Lady put on a
loose wrap, and the faithful Parker either
carried her or sufficiently helped her from
her bedroom to the couch in the little
sitting-room. In the meanwhile the hall-
porter hovered on the stairs, praying for
290

MOONSHINE TEIUMPHANT

the manager — prayers that went unan-
swered— and Chatteris fumed below. Then
we have a glimpse of the Sea Lady.

" I see her just in the crack of the
door," said the porter, " as that maid of
hers opened it. She was raised up on her
hands, and turned so towards the door.
Looking exactly like this "

And the hall-porter, who has an Irish
type of face, a short nose, long upper lip,
and all the rest of it, and who has also
neglected his dentist, projected his face
suddenly, opened his eyes very wide, and
slowly curved his mouth into a fixed
smile, and so remained until he judged the
effect on me was complete.

Parker, a little flushed, but resolutely
flattening everything to the quality of the
commonplace, emerged upon him sud-
denly. Miss Waters could see Mr. Chat-
teris for a few minutes. She was em-
phatic with the " Miss Waters," the more
291

THE SEA LADY

emphatic for all the insurgent stress of
the goddess, protestingly emphatic. And
Chatteris went up, white and resolved, to
that smiling expectant presence. No one
witnessed their meeting but Parker — as-
suredly Parker could not resist seeing that,
but Parker is silent — Parker preserves a
silence that rubies could not break.

All I know, is this much from the
porter :

" When I said she was up there and
would see him," he says, "the way he
rooshed up was outrageous. This is a
Private Family Hotel. Of course one
sees things at times even here, but

" I couldn't find the manager to tell
'im," said the hall -porter. "And what
was / authorised to do ?

" For a bit they talked with the door
open, and then it was shut. That maid
of hers did it — I lay."

I asked an ignoble question.
292

MOONSHINE TEIUMPHANT

" Couldn't ketch a word," said the hall-
porter. " Dropped to whispers — instanter."

II

And afterwards —

It was within ten minutes of one that
Parker, conferring an amount of decorum
on the request beyond the power of any
other living being, descended to demand
— of all conceivable things — the bath
chair !

"I got it," said the hall -porter with
inimitable profundity.

And then, having let me realise the
fulness of that, he said : " They never
used it ! "

"No?"

" No ! He carried her down in his
arms."

"And out?"

" And out ! "

293

THE SEA LADY

He was difficult to follow in his de-
scription of the Sea Lady. She wore
her wrap, it seems, and she was " like a
statue " — whatever he may have meant by
that. Certainly not that she was impas-
sive. " Only," said the porter, " she was
alive. One arm was bare, I know, and
her hair was down, a tossing mass of
gold.

"He looked, you know, like a man
who's screwed himself up.

" She had one hand holding his hair —
yes, holding his hair, with her fingers in
among it. ...

" And when she see my face she threw
her head back laughing at me.

" As much as to say, 'got 'im ! '

" Laughed at me, she did. Bubblin'
over."

I stood for a moment conceiving this
extraordinary picture. Then a question
occurred to me.

294

MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT

"Did he laugh?" I asked.

" Gord bless you, sir, laugh ? No / "

III

The definite story ends in the warm
light outside Lummidge's Private and
Family Hotel. One sees that bright soli-
tude of the Leas stretching white and
blank — deserted as only a seaside front in
the small hours can be deserted — and all
its electric light ablaze. And then the
dark line of the edge where the cliff drops
down to the undercliff and sea. And be-
yond, moonlit, the Channel and its in-
cessant ships. Outside the front of the
hotel, which is one of a great array of
pallid white fagades, stands this little black
figure of a hall-porter, staring stupidly
into the warm and luminous mystery of
the night that has swallowed Sea Lady
295

THE SEA LADY

and Chatteris together. And he is the
sole living thing in the picture.

There is a little shelter set in the brow
of the Leas, wherein, during the winter
season, a string band plays. Close by
there are steps that go down precipitously
to the lower road below. Down these
it must have been they went together,
hastening downward out of this life of
ours to unknown and inconceivable things.
So it is I seem to see them, and surely
though he was not in a laughing mood,
there was now no doubt nor resignation
in his face. Assuredly now he had found
himself, for a time at least he was sure of
himself, and that at least cannot be mis-
ery, though it lead straight through a few
swift strides to death.

They went down through the soft

moonlight, tall and white and splendid,

interlocked, with his arms about her, his

brow to her white shoulder and her hair

296

MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT

about his face. And she, I suppose, smiled
above him and caressed him and whispered
to him. For a moment they must have
glowed under the warm light of the lamp
that is half-way down the steps there, and
then the shadows closed about them. He
must have crossed the road with her,
through the laced moonlight of the tree
shadows, and through the shrubs and
bushes of the undercliff, into the shade-
less moon glare of the beach. There was
no one to see that last descent, to tell
whether for a moment he looked back be-
fore he waded into the phosphorescence,
and for a little swam with her, and pres-
ently swam no longer, and so was no
more to be seen by any one in this gray
world of men.

Did he look back, I wonder? They

swam together for a little while, the man

and the sea goddess who had come for

him, with the sky above them and the

20 297

THE SEA LADY

water about them all, warmly rilled with
the moonlight and set with shining stars.
It was no time for him to think of truth,
nor of the honest duties he had left behind
him, as they swam together into the un-
known. And of the end I can only guess
and dream. Did there come a sudden
horror upon him at the last, a sudden per-
ception of infinite error, and was he drawn
down, swiftly and terribly, a bubbling re-
pentance, into those unknown deeps ? Or
was she tender and wonderful to the last,
and did she wrap her arms about him and
draw him down, down until the soft waters
closed above him into a gentle ecstasy of
death ?

Into these things we cannot pry or
follow, and on the margin of the softly
breathing water the story of Chatteris
must end. For the tailpiece to that, let us
put that policeman who in the small hours
before dawn came upon the wrap the Sea
298

MOONSHINE TKIUMPHANT

Lady had been wearing just as the tide
overtook it. It was not the sort of gar-
ment low people sometimes throw away —
it was a soft and costly wrap. I seem to
see him perplexed and dubious, wrap in
charge over his arm and lantern in hand,
scanning first the white beach and black
bushes behind him and then staring out to
sea. It was the inexplicable abandonment
of a thoroughly comfortable and desirable
thing.

" What were people up to?" one fig-
ures him asking, this simple citizen of a
plain and observed world. "What do
such things mean ?

"To throw away such an excellent
wrap . . . !"

In all the southward heaven there were
only a planet and the sinking moon, and
from his feet a path of quivering light
must have started and run up to the ex-
treme dark edge before him of the sky.
299

THE SEA LADY

Ever and again the darkness east and west
of that glory would be lit by a momentary
gleam of phosphorescence; and far out
the lights of ships were shining bright and
yellow. Across its shimmer a black fish-
ing smack was gliding out of mystery into
mystery. Dungeness shone from the west
a pin-point of red light, and in the east
the tireless glare of that great beacon on
Gris-nez wheeled athwart the sky and van-
ished and came again.

I picture the interrogation of his lan-
tern going out for a little way, a stain of
faint pink curiosity upon the mysterious
vast serenity of night.

THE END

300

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